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One day the Marechal de Villars traversed the Place Vendome in a fine coach, loaded with pages and lackeys, to make way for which the mob of stock-jobbers had some difficulty. The Marechal upon this harangued the people in his braggart manner from the carriage window, crying out against the iniquity of stock-jobbing, and the shame it cast upon all.
The enthusiasm was increased by the timely publication of a Hymn to the Pillory, in which Defoe boldly declared the iniquity of his sentence, and pointed out to the Government more proper objects of their severity. Atheists ought to stand there, he said, profligate beaux, swindling stock-jobbers, fanatic Jacobites, and the commanders who had brought the English fleet into disgrace.
At this day, these are, in a great measure, succeeded by stock-jobbers, contractors, fortunate speculators, and professed gamblers. In defiance of the old proverb, "le ventre est le plus grand de tous nos ennemis," guttling and guzzling is the rage of these upstarts.
In the schemes and speculations put forth by stock-jobbers and stimulated by the printing of more currency, multitudes of small fortunes were absorbed and lost while a few swollen fortunes were rapidly aggregated in the larger cities. This crippled a large class in the country districts, which had employed a great number of workmen.
Having devoted a few sentences to a neighbouring establishment, the writer noted that it is "but a short step to a gloomy class of mortals, not less intent on gain than the stock-jobbers: I mean the dispensers of life and death, who flock together like birds of prey watching for carcasses at Batson's. I never enter this place, but it serves as a memento mori to me.
They still press on, they still nurse the dogged hope, not a hope of nauseating patronage, not a hope of reception into charmed social circles of stock-jobbers, pork-packers, and earl-hunters, but the hope of a higher synthesis of civilization and humanity, a true progress, with which the chorus "Peace, good will to men," "May make one music as before, But vaster."
The sale of Ismail's canal shares only served to stave off the impending crash which would have formed the natural sequel to this new "South Sea Bubble." All who took part in this carnival of folly ought to have suffered alike, Ismail and his beys along with the stock-jobbers and dividend-hunters of London and Paris.
But all of a sudden I remembered that the Armenian appeared to have altered his intentions towards me: he appeared no longer desirous that I should render the Haik Esop into English for the benefit of the stock-jobbers on Exchange, but rather that I should acquire the rudiments of doing business in the Armenian fashion, and accumulate a fortune, which would enable me to make a figure upon ’Change with the best of the stock-jobbers. ‘Well,’ thought I, withdrawing my hand from my pocket, whither it had again mechanically dived, ‘after all, what would the world, what would this city, be without commerce?
His face was black, and the sleeve of his duck jacket had several big holes in it. His trousers were rent in places, and one of his long boots was burst, while Devine's hat, which was too big for him, hung shapeless and dotted with charred holes on his head. "I'm going back to Montreal in a day or two. Can I call on big stock-jobbers and company floaters like this?"
Luxury and the craving for pleasure, costly dinners, jewels, and extravagant households were the appanage of a new society composed entirely of stock-jobbers, army contractors, and shady financiers enriched by pillage.
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