Transferable shares
valued at 100 pounds can be secured and paid for by small instalments
of 5 pounds or less. If, then, his 100 pound shares rise to 130 pounds
each, the adventurer can sell at a nominal profit of 30 per cent, but
a real profit of 600 per cent on his actual investment. This
intoxicates rich and poor alike. It enables the small capitalist to
operate on the scale that belongs, in healthy times, to the large
capitalist; a beggar can now gamble like a prince; his farthings are
accepted as counters for sovereigns; but this is a distinct feature of
all the more gigantic bubbles recorded. Here, too, you see, is
illusory credit on a vast scale, with its sure consequence, inflated
and fictitious values; another bit of soap that goes to every bubble
in history. Now for the Transatlantic loans. I submit them to a simple
test. Judge nations like individuals. If you knew nothing of a man but
that he had set up a new shop, would you lend him money? Then why lend
money to new republics of whom you know nothing but that, born
yesterday, they may die to-morrow, and that they are exhausted by
recent wars, and that, where responsibility is divided, conscience is
always subdivided?"
"Well said, Richard, well said."
"If a stranger offered you thirty per cent, would you lend him your
money?"
"No; for I should know he didn't mean to pay."
"Well, these foreign negotiators offer nominally five per cent, but,
looking at the price of the stock, thirty, forty, and even fifty per
cent.
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