PANDEMONIUM ; 



OR, THE 



TACTICS OF THK STOCK EXCHANGE. 



" Sunt quibus in Satyra nimeum videar acer 

 Et ultraque legem tendere opus." 



SOME of our readers (to paraphrase the lines which we have chosen 

 as a rubric to our present article) may probably reproach us with 

 having in our last, indulged in " assertion without proof, declamation 

 without argument, and violent censures without dignity or modera- 

 tion." We shall in consequence, on this occasion, preface by a dis- 

 tinct assertion, which we owe not less to them than to our own dig- 

 nity that we war not with individuals ; but our remarks are levelled 

 at the atrocious system of villany supported at the damnable principle 

 represented by the stock-jobbing canaille, which is exercising so de- 

 moralizing an influence upon our national character. 



Unphilosophical as it may be held, to attribute to uniform causes, 

 the difficulties and the privations under which most classes of the 

 population of this country are at present labouring, and without 

 seeking to underrate the operation of those several influences such 

 as the transition from war to peace, the free trade system, the corn 

 laws, the return from a paper to a metallic currency, each of which 

 in its turn has been accused of engendering the evil we have, ne- 

 vertheless no hesitation in asserting, that the primary cause, the 

 causa causans of our distress, is to be attributed to the rise, which 

 since the year 1810 has taken place in the exchangeable value of the 

 precious metals; from the increased demand for them, on the one hand, 

 for the purposes of commerce and luxury, which since that period 

 have received a prodigious development ; and the falling-off, on the 

 other, in the production of the American mines, the influence of which 

 is, in fact, felt with more or less intensity all over the globe. If our 

 views be correct and they have received the approbatory fiat of some 

 distinguished political economists it must follow, that all and every 

 means by which the equilibrium between the demand and the sup- 

 ply can be restored, is an object of paramount importance to this 

 country. Hence the importance of giving a rapid and extended 

 development to the mineral riches of the ci-dcvant Spanish and 

 Portuguese colonies, through the instrumentality of British skill and 

 capital. And hence, consequently, the importance of the various 

 mining companies as the means of removing the primary cause of our 

 national distress. That the sanguine hopes entertained of attaining 

 this desideratum, conceived on the first organization of these compa- 

 nies, have been disappointed and that too, from causes in almost 

 every instance to be attributed to the dishonesty or the incapacity of 

 their directors is a melancholy truth, with which all those who 

 have had the misfortune to embark capital in these undertakings 



