THE TACTICS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE. 155 



have long been familiar. To such an extent, in fact, has the system of 

 directorial delinquency been carried, that these speculations, so im- 

 portant in a national point of view, have been brought into such 

 public disestimation that they have become a popular jest. A 

 similar fate appears to await the attempt of developing on a grand 

 and extended scale the mineral riches of our own islands, and which 

 promised so extended a field to our unemployed and redundant 

 population. But this public disestimation is not to be wondered at 

 when we only recollect to what base and villanous purposes mining 

 operations, both at home and abroad, have been made subservient. 

 A set of fellows, many of them bankrupts alike in fortune and 

 in speculation, form a company to work a mine. Whether the scene 

 of their projected operations be situated in the moon, or whether it 

 hath no other existence than in their own imaginations, c'est egale 

 the real mine to be worked being the pockets of the public. When 

 a British copper mining company was brought out, even with an 

 ordnance map before them, not one of the directors could point out 

 its position ; and, here we beg to state that, if we recur to any par- 

 ticular company, we do so as a practical example, not only of the 

 gross defrauds generally practised by directors, but also of the be- 

 sotted credulity, the asinine simplicity, of the public. As an in- 

 stance of the latter, we shall refer to a particular prospectus. After the 

 usual flourish by way of exordium of the inexhaustible riches of the 

 mine, it proceeded to say that it had been abandoned by the former 

 proprietors, merely because they did not possess a steam-engine of suf- 

 ficient power to remove the accumulated water. Yet, with this flimsy 

 device, the fallacy of which imbecility itself would have detected, the 

 public was gulled it gulped down the monstrous fact, that Cornish 

 miners, above all people in the world, would abandon an El Dorado 

 of a mine, from the very inadequate cause of not possessing a steam- 

 engine of sufficient power to make its resources available. The real 

 fact of the abandonment by the former proprietors of the Great 

 Wheal Charlotte Mine a knowledge of which we have acquired 

 from local sources of the highest authority is, that it was exhausted, 

 and this the unfortunate shareholders, to their cost, will find out 

 when it is too late. So much for the case. Now, then, for Messieurs 

 les Directeurs. Shortly after the formation of this company, an 

 eminent barrister, a man of family and fortune, and totally ignorant 

 of the real characters concerned, was induced to become a director. 

 From something, however, which transpired shortly after his elec- 

 tion, he was led in his own mind to question the very existence of 

 the mine ; to work which, the company, of which he had so incau- 

 tiously become a director, was formed. 



" Do you really think," said he one day, in a tone of great agi- 

 tation, to the secretary ; " do you really think that such a mine as 

 the Great Wheal Charlotte does actually exist ? or," said he, con- 

 tinuing his interrogation, "do you know any thing of these di- 

 rectors?" " The latter question," said the secretary, " I am unable 

 to answer, as my acquaintance with them is even shorter than your 

 own. But as to the mere existence of the mine itself, I have no 

 doubts on that point, though I have a shrewd suspicion that not a 



