The public now broke
like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels of
enterprise, and up went the shares to a high premium.
Almost contemporaneously, numerous joint-stock companies were formed,
and directed toward schemes of internal industry. The small
capitalists that had sold out of the Navy Five per Cents threw
themselves into them all, and being bona fide speculators, drew
hundreds in their train. Adventure, however, was at first restrained
in some degree by the state of the currency. It was low, and rested on
a singularly sound basis. Mr. Peel's Currency Bill had been some
months in operation; by its principal provision the Bank of England
was compelled on and after a certain date to pay gold for its notes on
demand. The bank, anticipating a consequent rush for gold, had
collected vast quantities of sovereigns, the new coin; but the rush
never came, for a mighty simple reason. Gold is convenient in small
sums, but a burden and a nuisance in large ones. It betrays its
presence and invites robbers; it is a bore to lug it about, and a
fearful waste of golden time to count it. Men run upon gold only when
they have reason to distrust paper. But Mr. Peel's Bill, instead of
damaging Bank of England paper, solidified it, and gave the nation a
just and novel confidence in it. Thus, then, the large hoard of gold,
fourteen to twenty millions, that the caution of the bank directors
had accumulated in their coffers, remained uncalled for.
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