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The air was obscured by other matters. But in this work I have said so much on the subject that I need say little now. The joint stock banks now keep a main part of their reserve on deposit with the bill-brokers, or in good and convertible interest-bearing securities. From these they obtain a large income, and that income swells their profits.
During that panic, the Bank of England advanced to the bill-brokers more than 9,000,000 L., though their advances to bankers, whether London or country, were only 8,000,000 L.; and, not unnaturally, the Bank thought it unreasonable that so large an inroad upon their resources should be made by their rivals.
Governors with their staffs, permanent officials, contractors for the revenue, negotiators, bill-brokers, bankers, merchants, were scattered everywhere in thousands. Money poured in upon them in rolling streams of gold. The largest share of the spoils fell to the Senate and the senatorial families. The Senate was the permanent Council of State, and was the real administrator of the Empire.
Meanwhile it was he who paid the dowry of Catherine de' Medici to the Duke of Orleans, helping thus to strengthen the house of princes against whom he was plotting, by that splendid foreign alliance which placed a descendant of the Florentine bill-brokers on the throne of France.
Alfred Braddell had one friend more intimate than the rest, John Walter Ardworth, a cashiered officer, a ruined man, pursued by bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs. To this man we have lately had reason to believe that the child was given. Ardworth, however, was shortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors.
Such years alter altogether an important part of the mercantile world: the final question of bill-brokers, 'which bills will be paid and which will not? which bills are second-rate and which first-rate? would be answered very differently at the beginning of the year and at the end.
At the beginning of the time the London and Westminster Bank had lent 5,000,000 L. more to the bill-brokers than they had at the end of it; and that 5,000,000 L. the bank had added to its reserve against a time of difficulty. The intensity of the demand on the bill-broker is aggravated therefore by our peculiar system of banking.
The public terror at such times is indiscriminate. When one house of good credit has perished, other houses of equal credit though of different nature are m danger of perishing. The many holders of the banking reserve would under the natural system of banking be obliged to advance out of that reserve to uphold bill-brokers and similar dealers.
The answer is, that it obtained it by means of the bankers' balances, and that it did so in two ways. First, the German Government had a large balance of its own lying at a particular Joint Stock Bank. That bank lent this balance at its own discretion, to bill-brokers or others, and it formed a single item in the general funds of the London market.
Probably not one-thousandth part of the creditors on security of Overend, Gurney and Co., had ever expected to have to rely on that security, or had ever given much real attention to it. Sometimes, indeed, the confidence in the bill-brokers goes farther. A considerable number of persons lend to them, not only without much looking at the security but even without taking any security.
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