m 
 
 
THE 
 
 DEMONOLOGY OF TRADE 
 
 A SEMES OF AKTICLES REPRINTED FROM THE 
 “PORCUPINE 
 
 “ Worldly -wealth is the Devil’s bait; and those whose minds feed upon 
 riches recede in general from real Happiness in proportion as their stores 
 increase.”—B oetok. 
 
 LIVERPOOL: 
 
 PORCUPINE” OFFICE, 58, CABLE STREET. 
 
^ e.1 > p vvi oi vi 
 
 I J&V 
 
 C635" 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 At the request of many friends the Editor of “ Porcupine ” has been 
 induced to republish the Articles which have recently appeared in that 
 Journal under the title of “ The Demonology op Trade,” together 
 with three other Articles which, though not issued at first under that 
 title, have a kindred application. 
 
 He does this in the interest of commercial morality, feeling con¬ 
 vinced that, though the characters introduced are imaginary, the abuses 
 described are grave and substantial, and that exposure and ridicule are 
 well calculated to secure the remedy which the claims of legitimate 
 traders and the reputation of general commerce alike demand. 
 
THE DEMONOLOGY OF TRADE 
 
 I.—ACCOMMODATION-BILLS : MR. BUMPTIOUS 
 AND HIS FAILURES. 
 
 In old times, when the Saviour of men went about this world 
 doing good, one of the good things which He did was to cast 
 out devils. From the accounts which have reached us of the 
 Demonology of those days, we are led to conclude that the 
 demons themselves were rather a low and vulgar set, given to 
 brawling and tearing, and practices which were upon the whole 
 loathsome and repulsive. The demons, for instance, who dwelt 
 among the tombs must have had, upon the whole, a melancholy 
 and mouldy time of it, and one is apt to think would gladly 
 welcome an exorcism which introduced them to a more lively 
 possession. We have changed all that now. The modem 
 phases of Demonology are as varied and exciting as the old 
 phases were gloomy and horrible. No Divine power being 
 actively exerted to cast them out, the demons have increased 
 and multiplied until their name and occupation is legion. They 
 swarm. Everywhere you find men possessed with devils, and 
 performing their fantastic tricks before heaven and the world : 
 in the pulpit, in the learned professions, in trade. One preacher 
 who this week moves you to penitence and to tears, startles you 
 the next by changing his doxy or his wife—perhaps both : 
 
6 
 
 another pawns his presentation canonicals for admission to the 
 theatre. Your family lawyer leaves rather suddenly for a Con¬ 
 tinental tour, and you find, on looking over his papers, that he 
 has been fattening for years upon the kernel of your trusts, and 
 that he has left you the shell. The subject, in fact, opens up a 
 boundless range of illustration; but for the present we shall 
 content ourselves with a few remarks upon what may be called 
 the Demonology of Trade. Liverpool traders once had the 
 reputation of being the most honourable in their dealings of all 
 traders in the world: a man’s word on ’Change was his bond, 
 and he looked his debts in the face, and paid them with his own 
 money. Of course, this was a slow and fogey time, and its few 
 representatives who still linger amongst us are regarded -with the 
 interest which attaches more or less to all antiquarian relics. 
 
 It becomes a curious speculation, what has led to the changed 
 character of modern business 1 —and upon the whole we are in¬ 
 clined to think that demon influence is mainly at the bottom of 
 it. We cannot otherwise explain the many instances which pre¬ 
 vail of a man’s success being so often in the inverse proportion 
 to his honesty. It is difficult to account for that peculiar good 
 fortune known as the “ Devil’s own luck” following some men 
 so continuously, except from the fact that they themselves are 
 either directly commissioned by the head of the Cloven-foot 
 establislunent to open branches here, or that they are possessed 
 with devils who have a speciality for business, and who are 
 deputed to enter into a merchant, shipowner, or banker, as the 
 case may be, and occupy him either for a term of years or for his 
 natural life. Money-making is a fascinating enough pursuit 
 under ordinary circumstances, but when a man who has the 
 desire to bo rich becomes possessed of a demon of the same way 
 of thinking he goes at a far faster rate than the swine went down 
 the steep place into the sea, though wdth this material difference, 
 that instead of being choked, as the swine were, he appears to 
 
thrive upon and enjoy the pace. The unlimited command which 
 he has of capital, and the exemption from the injurious effects 
 which one would suppose ought to characterise failure, are other 
 grounds in favour of the infernal hypothesis. What a pottering 
 set of fumblers were the alchemists in comparison with our 
 modem trading transmuters, who require no other “philoso¬ 
 pher’s stone” than the accommodation-bill! Given a substratum 
 of actual business and connection in bills to begin with, you can 
 rear upon it a fabric of fictitious capital to the extent of millions. 
 The larger the transactions the better. On a small scale they 
 would be mean, tradesmanlike, fraudulent; but when you deal 
 with ships, and cotton, and produce, you must look through a 
 merchant’s and not a tradesman’s spectacles, and the magnitude 
 of the game and its probable profits should eclipse every other 
 consideration. Perhaps the best illustration we can give of the 
 v aecommodation-bill structure- is that afforded by Chizzel&h, of 
 Chizzelem Brothers & Co. Chizzelcm deals largely in shipping, 
 and is such an adept in mixing up the genuine with the accom¬ 
 modation bills that the bankers cannot distinguish one from the 
 other, the accommodation-paper bearing precisely the complexion 
 of the real. Chizzelem, too, knows the banks where this kind 
 of paper can be best melted. He rarely deals with a fogey bank 
 at all. He goes to the new, adventurous, pushing concern over 
 the way, where directors and managers (being also demon- 
 possessed) see no reason why the old-fashioned banks should 
 monopolise the largo accounts, and recognising in Chizzelem a 
 genius for gigantic operations, fall in with his views. The theory 
 of accommodation-bills, as applied to shipping or any other 
 speculative business, is this If, with good luck and money at 
 5 per cent., with an extra 2 per cent, bank commission for dis¬ 
 counting and renewal of the bills, you can realise a gross profit 
 of from 20 to 25 per cent., and can keep the ball moving, you 
 will gain a clear profit of from 15 to 20 per cent. Thus, if your 
 
accommodation-paper amounts in the year to £240,000 your 
 profit ranges from £30,000 to £40,000 a-year. These are only 
 small amounts, but still they will serve to illustrate the practice. 
 Of course, failure comes some time. The bank-rate advances to 
 10 per cent., bills cannot be discounted under 12, and thus, after 
 allowing for bank commission and the cost of marine insurance, 
 the entire earnings—large though they may be—of ships (if the 
 adventure be in ships) may be absorbed by the expenses. The 
 bills grow larger every time they are renewed ; a panic or a bad time 
 causes a scarcity of freights, and a dead-lock or failure is the result. 
 
 Now, some people may imagine, in their fond simplicity, that 
 when a man fails he is ruined; and that he either puts up his 
 shutters and wends his way to the workhouse; or, if he move 
 about at all, that ho presents somewhat the appearance of the 
 gaunt man who parades Castle Street, and grows shabbier and 
 more hungry-looking every day. Obsolete notion! The state 
 of failure or liquidation is the chrysalis from which men like 
 Chizzelem emerge more radiant and magnificent than before. 
 They take bigger houses, buy more spanking horses, enlarge their 
 conservatories, are more liberal patrons of music and the drama, 
 devote themselves more conspicuously than ever to the duties of 
 the bench (if magistrates), and come down upon publicans and 
 sinners with the heaviest sledge-hammer of the law. Why, 
 Bumptious (in the Australasian trade) has failed five times, and 
 is, if possible, at this moment, livelier and more prosperous than 
 ever. He has a memorandum-book in which his failures are 
 recorded in order of date, with the name of the liquidator or 
 accountant who is concerned for each ; and, should you happen 
 to call upon him with regard to any rather old account, Bump¬ 
 tious looks thoughtful for a moment, as though a question had been 
 suddenly put to him about the date of Queen Anne’s death, or 
 some other event in which he had merely a slender historic 
 interest. 
 
L “ Let me see,” he says (still reflectively), “that was my third. 
 —Grime ! who has my third ?” 
 
 “ Grewley,” responds Mr. Grime (the confidential clerk), 
 from the back office. 
 
 “ All! yes, I thought so; if you will go to Mr. Grewley, sir, 
 he will tell you all about it; the matter passed from my hands 
 altogether some years ago.” 
 
 You go to Mr. Grewley and find that at some distant date, 
 and should a series of circumstances happen to converge in one 
 direction at that date, you may receive a dividend of three 
 farthings, but that there is no actual certainty about it. It may 
 be asked, “ but how can these tilings be managed ?” My dear 
 friend, you evidently live in the country, but we will endeavour 
 to tell you. "When Bumptious comes down, Chizzelein himself, 
 or some other eminent firm possessed by a devil, determines upon 
 “ backing him up.” Of course, it suits their convenience and 
 purpose to do so. An arrangement is made by which Chizzolem 
 secures himself by getting into his hands the hypothecation of 
 freights or the mortgages upon Bumptious’ ships. He attends 
 the meeting of creditors, represents himself as one of the largest, 
 praises the energy and business qualities of Bumptious, declares 
 that he is a most deserving man, though at this moment oppressed 
 by unexpected difficulties, but that he (Chizzelem) will make it a 
 point of honour to see that the affairs are satisfactorily adjusted 
 for the benefit of all concerned. Perhaps one ignorant creditor 
 —a shipjoiner, or some other tradesman interested to the extent 
 of a few hundred pounds—ventures to ask what has become of 
 the money 1 Can any gentleman present inform him where the 
 assets are 1 The “ gentlemen present ” look rather puzzled them¬ 
 selves, as though this after all might, if put by a larger creditor, 
 be a question of some weight; but, before their speculation on 
 the point can assume any definite form, Bumptious is on his legs. 
 “ Do you think, sir,” he indignantly exclaims, “ that I have 
 swallowed them?” 
 
10 
 
 The tradesman, abashed at the hardihood of his question, 
 particularly in such fine commercial company, meekly replies, 
 “No, sir—oh, no, sir;” and the matter ends. 
 
 “ My good friend,” says Chizzelem, rising again, “ the assets 
 are all here, and you will in due time get your share. Leave it 
 entirely to me, and I will do my best for you and my brother 
 creditors.” So the creditors all sign the deed; no one presumes 
 to ask whether Chizzelem is secured or not; the question is settled, 
 and Bumptious is again free to gambol in fresh fields and pastures 
 new. Probably, as a mental relaxation, he will buy an estate, 
 build a new town, and inform his friends that he has arranged 
 for an earldom. 
 
 II.—MR. BILKER AND THE QUICKSAND 
 
 BANK. 
 
 third failure having been accomplished, he was airing his wings 
 for a more extended commercial flight. We do not distinctly 
 remember the circumstances of failure No. 4, but Bumptious has 
 the facts all down in his diary, and those of our readers who are at 
 all desirous of information are referred to him. The chief feature of ‘ 
 No. 5 was the fine tact and consideration displayed in preventing 
 the machinery of the business from standing still while the affairs, 
 of what may be called the old concern were being wound up. 
 The firm of Bumptious & Co. suspends payment and commences; 
 liquidation, say, at 11.45 a.m. By 12.20 circulars are issued 
 stating that the house of “ Bumptious, Haw’thorne & Co.” have- 
 undertaken the business of the late firm of Bumptious & Co.,, 
 and will be prepared to execute all commissions intrusted to> 
 them with the same promptitude, fidelity, &c., &c. For distant; 
 towns copies of the circular have been posted the night before,, 
 
11 
 
 so that any little anxiety created by the announcement of the 
 suspension is immediately allayed. The large brass plate of 
 “Bumptious & Co.” has been for a few days at the engraver’s 
 for the insertion of Hawthorne's name; and as soon as the credi¬ 
 tors have met, and the liquidators are appointed, the plate is 
 screwed up; an empty closet is taken on the top floor, and a 
 memorandum pinned on the door, “ Bumptious & Co., in liqui¬ 
 dation,” is the only vestige of the late firm. Bumptious himself 
 (when all the arrangements are complete) dines, goes on’Change, 
 and is as imposing and oracular as before. One or two friends 
 (possessed), who have received their circulars, congratulate him 
 upon his happy knack of adjusting his affairs, and particularly on 
 the choice of a name for the new firm. 
 
 “ Capital name that for a dummy,” exclaims Blocks, the ship- 
 chandler (who has a poetic turn ); “ it has a pleasant, spring-like 
 flavour that does one good.” 
 
 Bumptious disowns the soft impeachment as to Hawthorne 
 being a dummy, and explains that he is a very deserving fellow, 
 who has a talent for the preparation of private as well as credi¬ 
 tors’ balance-sheets, and that his services have at length been 
 rewarded by an ostensible partnership. ¥e use the word osten¬ 
 sible, because, as Bumptious intimates in a confidential whisper 
 to Blocks, Hawthorne has no real power in the concern, but 
 receives a salary as before, the only difference being that he is to 
 have a commission on the new business of shipping crate eggs 
 to Patagonia, should that trade prove a remunerative one. And 
 so the new house goes on. If a creditor of the old firm calls he 
 is referred to the closet, but as nobody is ever in the closet, and 
 the only person who has the key is Bumptious himself, the 
 creditor gains but little information, and probably, if the claim 
 is not large, does not trouble himself to call again. If he is per¬ 
 sistent, and duns Bumptious, he is referred to the accountant, 
 with the result described in our first article. 
 
12 
 
 ji*' 
 
 
 In our previous paper we touched slightly upon the facilities 
 given by hanks, when their managers and directors became demon- 
 possessed, to traders similarly possessed. A good example of this 
 is furnished by Bilker, of the White Squall Line, and his relations 
 with the Quicksand Bank. When Bilker owed the Quicksand 
 Bank between/£60,000 and £70,000 on overdrawn account, 
 besides accommodation-bills, he had an idea of suspending, but 
 the bank would not hear of it. The directors could not think of 
 putting the stopper upon a man of Bilker’s genius, as the Gas 
 Company or the milkman would put a stopper upon you and me, 
 my good friend, if we got into arrears. Besides, the manager and 
 directors had gone heavily into accommodation-paper, and if 
 Bilker were not kept up the network of bills might be broken, 
 and the bank’s own reputation suffer. Hitherto unlimited con¬ 
 fidence had been placed in the Quicksand. Its directors were 
 known to be men of large capital, and to have themselves invested 
 heavily in the bank shares. That they had overdrawn their 
 accounts—in most cases far beyond the extent of their holding 
 as investors—was a private matter with which the public and the 
 shareholders had nothing to do. “ What earthly concern,” argues 
 Shrivels, the manager, “ have the shareholders in the business at 
 all so long as they receive cheering reports and regular and hand¬ 
 some dividends ? Hay, further, what is the end and purpose of 
 a shareholder’s existence but to minister to the pleasure, excite¬ 
 ment, and occupation of directors, and to the profit of the manager 
 and his relations!” 
 
 Ah, friends, when the Devil enters into us he turns our brains 
 upside down. A “ local ” preacher, more remarkable for earnest¬ 
 ness than for logical precision of thought, was once speaking of 
 the wisdom and beneficence of Providence, and pointed out, as an 
 illustration of these attributes, that the largest rivers had been made 
 to flow near the largest towns. It is in some such inverted order 
 that possessed people regard the relationships and duties of business. 
 
13 
 
 So Bilker is urged to let tlie bank carry him on for a term of 
 years. Coyly he consents; and, as a matter of form, he is invited 
 to send in a statement of his affairs, the hint being given to him 
 by Shrivels that the assets are to be set down at one-third more 
 than their actual value, so that, if anything should come out, the 
 bargain will not look so bad for the bank. The conditions of the 
 arrangement were peculiar. Bilker, to the outside world, was to 
 be Bilker still, retaining his carriage, his horses, his dinner-parties, 
 his fees as a director of various companies, and receiving a hand¬ 
 some allowance for his conduct of the business operations, the 
 bank being responsible for all expenses and losses; and, with a 
 wide-sweeping generosity, undertaking to pay all the debts which 
 Bilker owed to other people. Then, with an exquisitely tender 
 consideration for Mrs. and the little Bilkers, the bank also under¬ 
 takes to keep the premiums upon Bilker’s valuable life paid up, 
 in order that no anxieties as to the future may cloud his brow or 
 impair his energy. But somehow or other the scheme does not 
 work smoothly; the genius of Bilker himself appears to fail in 
 certain critical operations; while the bank goes deeper and deeper 
 into accommodation-bills and letters of credit until their coffers 
 are choked. The refusal of the “ Old Lady” to rediscount 
 pierces the gigantic windbag, which comes flapping down into 
 the mud. The bank stops, and Bilker’s liability is half-a-million. 
 
 You can imagine the shudder of a man who, dreaming ho was 
 in Paradise, awakes to the torments of hell. Such a shudder was 
 felt by the shareholders at the meeting when they first became 
 alive to the fact that for years the Quicksand Bank had been 
 insolvent, and had been worked as a huge gambling machine ; 
 that the capital account had been systematically cooked to suit 
 the palate of the shareholders; that after the capital itself had 
 disappeared they had been deluded, by the usual dividends and 
 bonuses, into the notion that their property still remained; and 
 that they had now to pay in full the debts incurred by the pos- 
 
14 
 
 sessed directors and their myrmidons. The man who appears the 
 least affected by the whole business is Bilker. As Hope 
 “ lights her torch at Nature’s funeral pile,” 
 so he uses the last phase of the situation to advantage, and 
 makes such terms with the liquidators, as to the sale of ships 
 or other assets, that he still derives a handsome annuity from 
 the estate, and is kept in excellent feather until his plans have 
 ripened for the next game. It is needless to dwell further upon 
 the fall of the Quicksand Bank. "We all remember it: how 
 names of men who had hitherto been our local models of com¬ 
 mercial respectability and beneficence were trailed in the dirt; 
 and how the arrangement with Bilker was only one of a series 
 of arrangements which the directors, goaded on one side by the 
 demon of speculation, and on the other fearing to tell the share-, 
 holders the real truth, adopted. lS r o doubt they adopted it with 
 the hope—faint and flickering it must have been at last—that by 
 some fortunate convulsion of affairs things would come right again. 
 
 We know the result, and the fate also of other banks bitten 
 by the auri sacra fames ; but further illustrations of the subject 
 we must take up next week. 
 
 III.—THE DEVILFISH OF COMMERCE. 
 
 All of us who are familiar with Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the 
 Sea ” remember the shudder with which we read the account of 
 Galliat’s combat with the devilfish, and the relief we felt when 
 the expedient of cutting off the creatine’s head having occurred to 
 the hardy fisherman, the antennae gradually relaxed, a shapeless 
 mass of jelly sank to the bottom, and Galliat was free, though 
 minus half his blood. Of course, the narrative is exaggerated ) 
 but it has a pretty close parallel in the unequal combat which 
 many shareholders and creditors have been of late waging with 
 
15 
 
 as foul and griping a blood-sucker—the Devilfish of Commerce. 
 The Devilfish of Commerce is Protean. He does not lurk only- 
 in dens and caves. As Satan is all the more dangerous when, 
 tucking his tail under his arm, he goes abroad as a gentleman, so 
 our Devilfish plays his finest pranks on the Rialto, and in broad 
 daylight. All the stock-in-trade that he requires is plenty of 
 dash. The credulity of a fond public and the indulgence of 
 bank directors supply every other requisite for a large business ; 
 and if a smash comes, Avhy, so much the worse for the public and 
 for the directors. The Devilfish is content; he has had his fill 
 in that quarter; and all he has to do is to batten quietly upon 
 the plunder already swallowed, and find some new cruising- 
 ground when he is hungry again. 
 
 It has now become an interesting question, how long is this 
 process to go on 1 !—for if the present pace be continued there 
 must come a time when our commercial life-blood will all be 
 drained to feed the monster, and when the monster himself, 
 unless he can migrate to some other planet, will die too. The 
 only remedy is to do what Galliat did—cut off his head. Let us 
 pluck the thief from the Exchange as we pluck the pickpocket 
 from the street, and by swift and stern punishment teach him 
 better manners, if we cannot teach him better morals. In 
 previous articles upon the subject of commercial delinquency we 
 have expressed the opinion that it is far better for the whole truth 
 to come out in all its hideousness, than that arrangements should 
 be sanctioned for condoning frauds under the guise of protecting 
 the interests of persons whose estate is in liquidation. We hold 
 to that opinion still, and it is strengthened by recent facts winch 
 have come to our knowledge relative to the mode in which liqui¬ 
 dators appear to be hoodwinked, and shareholders defrauded, 
 with regard to the sale of ships forming a portion of the assets 
 of such estates. At the inquest on a broken bank, or a mur¬ 
 dered company, your liquidator rises, and, with a solemnity and 
 
16 
 
 pathos befitting the mournful occasion, implores the shareholders 
 to keep certain arrangements snug and quiet, in order that the 
 liquidators may work things round for the general advantage, 
 and realise the assets more fully and satisfactorily. But, granted 
 that, as a matter of expediency, this is a justifiable course, what 
 guarantee have the shareholders that such a realisation will b e 
 made ? None whatever. The declaration is the veriest cant and 
 rot. The chances are that the liquidators themselves are either 
 the dupes or the tools of the Devilfish who has worked all the 
 mischief, and who now, having assumed his more shadowy and 
 gelid form, lurks in the lower waters until the poor shareholder 
 has sunk within reach of his antenna;. If liquidators are neither 
 dupes nor co-conspirators, whence the reluctance manifested of 
 late to put up ships by public auction ? Why, when the share¬ 
 holder is decoyed into the belief that his shipping assets are 
 being realised as rapidly and favourably as possible, are those 
 assets sold for an old song to the knowing ones who are in the 
 secret? What mysterious power holds our Devilfish, that 
 intending purchasers are obliged to make things pleasant with 
 him before an offer will be entertained by the liquidators? 
 Why should he, to pocket a douceur, be enabled to sell a vessel 
 for half its value ?—and why should men who profess to be high- 
 minded and honourable sanction such a malversation of the 
 shareholders’ or creditors’ money? 
 
 Only the other day we were introduced to a new form of 
 juggling in connection with the sale of ships belonging to an 
 insolvent estate. Have you any idea, my dear reader, what a 
 “ private auction” is ? Your innocent mind naturally reverts to 
 the winding-up of the last church or Sunday school bazaar of 
 Ebenezer or St. Paul, with a most fascinating young gentleman 
 officiating as the auctioneer. But a private auction in the case 
 of a liquidating ship is a totally different affair. Two adven¬ 
 turers have received the 11 tip” from the Devilfish, and are pre- 
 
IT 
 
 pared to treat for their joint benefit. Everything is arranged, 
 the Devilfish has received his black-mail, the liquidators look 
 approvingly on, and the whole transaction is in trim when a 
 third party, who has caught scent of the bargain, comes in with 
 an offer. The knowing ones shrug their shoulders, whisper 
 together, and then buy him off. The field is again clear of com¬ 
 petition, the two adventurers act as one, and with the agency of 
 the Devilfish they buy the ship. But then arises another diffi¬ 
 culty. The two men quarrel over their bargain, and now comes 
 into play the principle of the “private auction.” It is agreed 
 that one of the two adventurers shall bid against the other, that 
 the highest bidder shall take the ship, and that the difference 
 between the price originally paid to the liquidators and the 
 highest bid shall be appropriated by the unsuccessful bidder. 
 
 How, we don’t know by what name our readers will designate 
 a transaction of this kind, but we call it robbery. If the black¬ 
 mail paid to the Devilfish, the money paid to the third party to 
 buy him off, and the difference between the two bids of the rival 
 adventurers be added together, they will represent a portion of 
 the value of the ship which should have found its way into the 
 coffers of the liquidators, and thence into the pockets of the 
 shareholders, but of which the latter have been defrauded. 
 Why liquidators who bear a reputation for fairness and integrity 
 will allow themselves to bo so bamboozled as to participate in 
 dirty work of this kind beats our comprehension ; but then Mr. 
 Porcupine only moves in the outside circle of business, and can¬ 
 not know all its secrets. Of course, the men who succeed in 
 buying ships cheap in tills private way are not the men to expose 
 the transaction. “Hon olet,” said Vespasian, when he was 
 twitted with selling his people’s manure, and “ non olet” echoes 
 the shipowner who profits by this equivocal bargain. But the 
 transaction does stink for all that, and those who wish to get rid 
 of the nuisance should bestir themselves. With regard to the 
 
18 
 
 points more particularly raised in this article, shareholders should 
 insist, when they have an opportunity of meeting together, upon 
 being supplied with complete information as to how many vessels 
 have been thus sold without being put openly upon the market, 
 or without one word of public announcement which would have 
 the effect of attracting bidders and securing the highest price 
 which could be obtained. They should also insist upon knowing 
 how many ships have been sold while actually at sea. By thus 
 showing that they are earnest in their intention to have their 
 assets honestly and fully realised, they will do much to check 
 the present iniquitous system and to recoup themselves. 
 
 With regard to the general question of mercantile immorality, 
 improved legislation would, no doubt, do much to cleanse the 
 Augean stable of commerce. But you cannot make people 
 either permanently honest or religious by Acts of Parliament. 
 The haste to be rich, and the reckless gambling with our own 
 and other people’s goods—but mainly with other people’s—• 
 which has been engendered, is the curse of modem times. 
 “ Learn to labour and to wait” is no doubt a hard lesson in these 
 feverish times, but, nevertheless, let us brace ourselves up and 
 learn it. Let us do all we can to work out in our private practice 
 the theories winch in public and at our prayers we so loudly 
 venerate. Let us, in fact, do unto others as we would others 
 should do unto us. Let us call fraud, wherever we find it, by its 
 right name, and give it due punishment. Thus only can we hope 
 to purify the atmosphere of trade, and give a deathblow to the 
 Devilfish of Commerce. 
 
 IV—THE CAGLIOSTRO OP COMMERCE. 
 
 Louis Napoleon and Mr. Disraeli were the favourite political 
 riddles of their day: now every schoolboy can give you the key¬ 
 word to the charade of their lives. But who will unravel the 
 
19 
 
 tangled biographies of the Cagliostros of Commerce—the daring, 
 subtle, adventurous men of whom Chizzelem is the type ? Mr. 
 Porcupine has some materials which may one day appear in three 
 volumes, with appropiate cuts and diagrams. At present he Inis 
 only time to give a few of the leading points .of the Chizzelem 
 genus, as further illustrating the Demonology of Trade. Chizzel¬ 
 em is the Titan of speculation. The only way to realise his 
 vastness is to approach it by some comparison with familiar 
 objects which the mind can apprehend. For instance—to put 
 the matter in a simple rule-of-threo fashion—as Compton House 
 is to the primitive village shop, where confectionery and valen¬ 
 tines divide the honours with red-herrings and pipeclay, so is 
 Mr. Chizzelem to the ordinary speculator. The ordinary man 
 deals in accommodation-paper by the sheet or the quire. Mr. 
 Chizzelem saves all intermediate expenses by having it manufac¬ 
 tured in reams, at a mill of his own, Avhere ho lias a staff of 
 designers and experts to give every tint, complexion, or indorse¬ 
 ment which the homo or foreign demand may require. 
 
 During the mania for public companies which burst out a 
 few years ago, Chizzelem’s genius was resplendent. Has any 
 lumber accumulated on his hands ? Presto ! a company is 
 improvised, and off it goes at a handsome premium. In conjunc¬ 
 tion with a prolific shipbuilder in the North, he becomes possessed 
 of a large amount of steam tonnage, and as some of the vessels 
 have been built in a dull time, and others resurrection ised (new 
 tops put on old bottoms), the average cost of the whole fleet is 
 low. With these vessels in hand Chizzelem becomes penetrated 
 with the conviction that increased facilities for ocean steam 
 navigation are indispensable in the most important of the trans- 
 Atlantic trades, and so the great Oceanic Steam-communication 
 Company, Limited, is incubated. The public mind is carefully 
 prepared for the new company ; prospectuses are issued; the 
 Stock Exchange is rigged by Chizzelem and his coadjutors, until 
 
20 
 
 the shares are at a premium of £7 or £& ; there is a rush of 
 applicants for shares ; a distribution is made pro rata to nearly 
 all who apply; a roseate halo invests the whole undertaking,and 
 the premium steadily increases, until Chizzelem is able to sell out 
 at a profit which covers his costs of promotion. As the line must 
 be organised without a moment’s delay, lest some opposition 
 concern might pounce upon this El Dorado of an idea, Chizzelem 
 liberally places the whole of his steam fleet at the disposal of the 
 directors. He declares that he desires to make no profit by this 
 proposal, that, having a large interest in the Company, his sole 
 object is to promote its welfare, and that he will be content to 
 accept for his steamers the price for which similar boats can be 
 constructed, without any extra consideration for his vessels being 
 immediately available. His brother directors are delighted with 
 the suggestion, and agree that an estimate shall be obtained from 
 an eminent builder, whose price is in such accordance with his 
 excellence of construction and perfection of finish that the 
 difference between the cost of the sample steamer and the cost of 
 Chizzelem’s fleet will, in itself, be a snug fortune. To ensure 
 perfect certainty on this head, however, Chizzelem gives a private 
 intimation to the builder that the question of cost is to be entirely 
 subsidiary to that of perfect construction. 
 
 Well, the Oceanic Company, Limited, gets to work, and it is 
 found, after allowing for the cost of vessels, that the capital upon 
 which they have to pay dividends is so large that the earnings 
 of the ships are most severely taxed. Then a whisper circulates 
 that the company have paid too much for their vessels. Chizzelem 
 is again equal to the occasion. He regrets that the company did 
 buy the steamers at such a dear time. His comrades in the game 
 shake their heads ruefully, and exclaim that the company can 
 never pay dividends with such a weight of capital, and while 
 their steamers are competing with boats of equal capacity, but 
 which have cost two-thirds less money. Chizzelem and his friends 
 
21 
 
 are, in fact, “ bearing ” the market, and, having sold at the 
 premium to which the shares had run up, they continue even 
 to sell as the market falls, so as to ensure a direct downward 
 tendency. This causes a panic in the stock, and bona fide 
 holders of shares rush to sell them. Thus, Chizzelem and his 
 friends are enabled to buy shares at many pounds below the price 
 at which they had themselves sold. When this downward 
 course has reached its climax, Chizzelem again works the oracle 
 upon the upward scale. He and his friends buy largely—so do 
 his brother directors; they then issue the most encouraging 
 assurances, pointing out that the property is unduly depressed; 
 that there is no ground for the depreciation ; adduce statistics, 
 &c., and give promises that the anticipated dividend will really 
 be paid. The shares recover materially, when, of course, Chizzel¬ 
 em sells out what ho had bought at a discount, and realises 
 another “pot” of money. For a time, in fact, the whole of the 
 board of the Oceanic are possessed by the Devil, and, though they 
 have not all the splendid tact and finesse of Chizzelem, they are 
 hard at work like maggots upon the vitals of the company, and 
 in commissions for charter, and orders for stores, and other 
 pickings, are making as much hay as they can before their sun 
 of office sets. But it does set at last. As clean a sweep is made 
 as when the money-changers were driven out of the temple, and 
 the Oceanic, under new, vigorous, and disinterested management, 
 like many a bantling bom of equivocal parentage, appears now 
 to be thriving and happy. 
 
 Of course, men like Chizzelem fail now and then, and bring 
 a bank or two down with them ; but, like the toy india-rubber 
 heads, they always come up with the same imperturbable smile 
 playing upon their faces. There is no emergency which they do 
 not anticipate. As Mr. Micawber said, with regard to Traddles’ 
 bill, “it is provided for.” For instance, when the Barnacles 
 Bank fell to pieces Chizzelem stopped payment. But he had 
 
22 
 
 previously insured his life for some thousands; and, by the 
 payment down of a lump sum, compromised all future payments i 
 of premium, so that if he should die the policy would be indis- j 
 putable; and, if he should fail, it would be a marketable security J 
 upon which money could be raised. In this way our ingenious i 
 friend triumphs over the difficulties as to post-nuptial settlements • ' j 
 an insurance for the benefit of one's wife and family not being j 
 regarded as a settlement, but as an expense quite as necessary j 
 and justifiable as house-rent or the cost of ])rovisions. C hizzel- j 
 em’s failure, therefore, is not a heartrending business. He lias • 
 lined his nest with eiderdown, and he can await the result calmly. 
 
 He retains his house, his seat on the magisterial bench, and sends 
 his carriages to the builders to be cleaned (with instructions 
 to warehouse them for a month or two). He employs an account¬ 
 ant equal to the occasion, an adept at keeping matters “dark and 
 quiet ” when necessary, and a solicitor equal in skill and in con¬ 
 cocting indisputable composition and inspection deeds to the 
 accountant. The creditors meet, and Mr. Chizzelem, with a 
 smiling and benevolent air, assures them that the assets far exceed 
 20s. in the pound ; that there will be no difficulty in realising 
 them, though it may take a month or two ; and that the only 
 reason for the stoppage of the firm was that bills had to be retired 
 at an hour’s notice; that ships, iron, and freight cannot in a 
 moment be turned into gold ; but that, if the requisite time be 
 allowed, all the creditors -will be paid, until a large surplus to 
 spare. He reminds them that such was the case on a former 
 occasion, and is confident that what lie has accomplished before 
 ho can accomplish again. The creditors hail the prospect with 
 joyful surprise, rapturously shake hands, sign the deed of 
 inspection, raise no question as to the whereabouts of the assets, 
 or as to who holds the securities, and not a syllable is breathed 
 about the paid-up policy for the many thousands settled upon 
 Mrs. Chizzelem. Everybody is delighted with everybody else, 
 
23 
 
 votes of confidence aro passed, the creditors are convinced that 
 no one is so competent to collect the assets as Chizzelem liimself, 
 and that the only surveillance necessary is that of the accountant 
 and the solicitor. So' the meeting breaks up, the buoyant 
 Chizzelem giving a parting promise that the creditors will not 
 only receive their 20s. within the required time, but ample 
 interest for the interval. Of course, through the prudence and 
 -forethought of the attorney, the deed, which, is signed, provides 
 for the exclusion of any subsequent inquiry into the arrangement 
 now made. 
 
 Now comes an operation for which Cliizzelem’s subtle apti¬ 
 tudes are unrivalled. He spreads the assets in all directions, and 
 so entangles the skein of his affairs that he alone can unravel it. 
 "When the maze is complete, he draws heavily upon the bankers 
 for current expenses, outfit of ships, credits abroad for ship’s dis¬ 
 bursements, and so on, until at length the bankers grow crusty, 
 and urge that they, who are themselves creditors, should not be 
 expected to incur additional risk for the benefit of the other 
 creditors. Chizzelem explains that before the 20s. can be paid 
 funds must bo forthcoming from some quarter; and the bankers 
 find that so many vessels have to be reclassed, coppered, repaired, 
 and refitted, that the creditors will have to risk at least 40s. in 
 the pound to get back 20s. They decline the risk. Chizzelem 
 is still equal to the situation : ho has anticipated it. My reader, 
 if ever you have left your business in a knot on the Saturday 
 night, has not the solution always occurred to you during the 
 Sunday morning’s sermon or prayer 1 How can you doubt that 
 “ religion is profitable to all things” when your experience tells 
 you that the best business ideas of your life have come to your 
 mind in church, and that notliing tends to mature them so rapidly 
 and pleasantly as the soothing hum of a preacher’s voice? So with 
 our friend Chizzelem. His happiest moves have occurred to him 
 either during his public devotions or when asking his “ silent 
 
24 
 
 "blessing ” over bis morning chop and bitter beer. He has already 
 played the game up to its present point, and knows the next 
 move exactly. He offers, if the creditors cannot make any better 
 arrangement, to buy the estate himself, at a price, and to pay 
 one-half in cash, and the remainder by instalments. The creditors, 
 after the first galvanic shock of the proposal is over, make the 
 calculation, and find that this sum amounts to about 3s. in the 
 pound. “But you promised us 20s.,” gasps one of the creditors. 
 “And so I do still,” replies the imperturbable Chizzelem. “I am 
 perfectly willing to carry out the original arrangement. If you 
 will advance me 40s. I will earn for you 60s., and then you will 
 get paid. If you decline this, why you had better realise 
 the assets yourselves.” The creditors venture to submit that 
 Chizzelem’s estimate of the assets is absurdly low. “If you think 
 so,” he replies, “why not put them in the market and see whether 
 anybody else will buy them at a higher price ?” The creditors, 
 slightly bewildered, make the application to somebody else; but, 
 as they cannot inform that person where the vessels are, how 
 insured, what are their engagements, who are the charterers, what 
 orders the captains have, or when the ships will come home (all 
 these being “points reserved” by Chizzelem himself), the bargain 
 goes off; and, in despair of making a better arrangement, they 
 accept Chizzelem’s proposal, who, having borrowed on the life 
 insurance policy the amount necessary for the cash payment, 
 secures his assets at the job price of 3s., giving a lien upon his 
 ships and other property for the instalments. 
 
 V.-THE ALI BABA COMPANY. 
 
 There is a story told of a man who, having failed eight times and 
 paid a composition of half-a-crown each time, maintained with 
 much plausibility and earnestness that, as eight half-crowns made 
 twenty shillings, he had paid his creditors 20s. in the pound. 
 
How, men of genius, like Mr. Cliizzolem, have a mode of paying 
 their 20s. which differs from tlxis in its operation, but is equally 
 cheap and plausible. Our readers will recollect that Mr. Chizzelem’s 
 creditors had not sufficient intelligence and enterprise to accept 
 his munificent proposal, that if they would advance him 40s. he 
 would make 60s. for them, in order that they might thus recoup 
 themselves. Having taken the assets to market they found no 
 one would buy them, for the simple reason that the affairs had 
 been so entangled and re-entangled by Chizzelem that the purchase 
 would have been about as risky as buying a flock of pigeons on 
 the wing. Utterly unable, for the same reason, to manage the 
 property themselves, they were shut up to the acceptance of Mr. 
 Chizzelem’s purchase of the assets on his own terms. 
 
 Society has its prejudices ; it will not recognise all at once the 
 innovations of genius. Chizzelem’s honour is assailed; envious 
 and spiteful people even allude to him as a “commercial nuisance;” 
 and, for a time, he is under a cloud. He therefore takes every 
 opportunity of explaining that he was, in reality, driven to the 
 arrangement of the 3s. by.the obstinacy of liis creditors; but 
 that he is the last man in the world to take an advantage of it at 
 their expense ; and that he intends, as he had done before, to pay 
 liis liabilities in full. The modus is instructive. Through discreet 
 and trusty agents, chiefly in London, he buys up a large amount 
 of his own paper at 3d. in the pound under the estimated dividend 
 that the sum agreed upon with the creditors will amount to. The 
 holders of the bills know the maximum dividend payable under 
 that arrangement, and in selling at the reduction they incur no 
 actual loss, as the difference about covers the interest; while, on 
 the other hand, as a mere matter of money, the operation with 
 regal’d to Chizzelem himself is equivalent to paying the instal¬ 
 ments. But, in point of eclat , it gives him a great advantage, 
 for, by judiciously repeating this operation of bill-buying, he is 
 enabled, before the instalments are due, to reduce the number of 
 
26 
 
 actual creditors to a few unimportant outsiders with whom it is 
 an easy matter to settle in full. An announcement is duly made, 
 therefore, that on a particular day, if the creditors will call at Mr. 
 Chizzelem’s office, they null receive their 20s. in the pound; and 
 there Chizzelem himself, glowing with candour and honesty (the 
 hulk of the hills being safely in his own pocket), pays off the 
 creditors who are left, while the event is duly panegyrised in next 
 morning’s papers as an example of the ultimate triumph of indus¬ 
 try and integrity over commercial difficulties. 
 
 But the crowning achievement, the chef cToeuvre, the monu¬ 
 mental arch upon which the name of Chizzelem is recorded for 
 the wonder and admiration of all time, is the Ali Baha Commer¬ 
 cial Company, Limited. Throughout the various changes of his 
 career Mr. Cliizzelem still clings to his ships; and all that is 
 required to keep his large business together, and to increase it 
 indefinitely, is to get cargoes shipped on credit, and obtain ad¬ 
 vances upon them in cash, or by acceptances of first-rate firms. 
 This requirement is handsomely met by the Ali Baba Company, 
 Limited. 
 
 No trader is proof against the breath of envy and slander; and 
 envious and slanderous people having made some havoc with 
 Chizzelem’s private reputation, he has evolved from his inner con¬ 
 sciousness, and a close study of the Limited Liability Act, the 
 Ali Baba Company, in order to obtain perennial credit in English 
 and foreign markets. If Mr. Chizzelem and his coadjutors have 
 resorted to the aid of fiction in the early organisation of the con¬ 
 cern, who in these days is to cast the first stone at them 1 Do 
 we, in other trades, never fictioniso 1 Does the bankrupt stock 
 bought at 49 £, and generously offered to the public at 50 per 
 cent, less than cost price, contain no unsaleable articles culled 
 from the trader’s own shelves 1 Has not every newspaper a larger 
 circulation than every other newspaper, daily and weekly, added 
 together ? Why, then, should the Ali Baba Company be singled 
 
27 
 
 out for reproach, merely because the company consists of Mr. 
 y Chizzelem, his clerks, and relations, and because the list of share¬ 
 holders sent up to the Board of Trade was composed for the most 
 part of “ dummies,” with a sprinkling of small householders from 
 St. Giles’, and similar neighbourhoods, who, for a trilling consid¬ 
 eration, had no objection to bo represented to Government as 
 capitalists interested in the Ali Baba to the extent of a thousand 
 or two, particularly as there is no liability, all the shares being 
 fully paid up 1 So long as the Ali Baba is floated, and the necessary 
 credit for its operations achieved, why should wo care about 
 analysing the slime from whence it sprung 1 Do not some of our 
 most splendid fruits and flowers thrive best upon a dung-heap 1 
 What does it matter to the Government or the public that of the 
 140,000 shares (“paid up,” remember) into which the Ali Baba 
 is divided, Mr. Chizzelem himself only holds one, and that 139,990 
 are in the name of his relative “ Mr. Jorkinsl” Nay, what does 
 it matter whether the capital be paid up at all, when no official 
 certificate is required to that effect 1 Why do you care to stir up 
 matters of this kind, and make yourselves disagreeable, when the 
 company itself, in all its completeness and magnificence, commands 
 your homage and admiration ? 
 
 The Ali Baba, of course, appoints Mr. Chizzelem as its 
 managing director, and Mr. Chizzelem, in forming what may be 
 called liis cabinet, constitutes his dear friend and relative, Mr. 
 Silas F. Chizzelem, broker to the company; while another rela¬ 
 tive, Mr. Jabez, is offered the lucrative appointment of supply¬ 
 ing the outfits for the ships. When the company is ready for 
 operations enormous contracts are entered into for rice, linseed, 
 coal, iron, and salt, which are imported and exported in the com¬ 
 pany’s vessels. When the ships load the produce abroad the 
 captains have instructions to sign bills of lading at a nominal rate, 
 say, of Is. per ton ; and as a third party holding these bills of 
 lading can insist upon the delivery upon payment of bill of lading 
 
28 
 
 freight, though it he only nominal (the average freight upon rice, 
 for instance, being about £3 10s. per ton), the difference between 
 that rate and the Is. per ton is equivalent to over one-half of the 
 original cost of rice abroad. The vendor, therefore, makes him¬ 
 self safe with this margin, and does not hesitate to draw upon the 
 Ali Baba Company for the cost of the cargo. The circulation of 
 these bills makes them familiar to the foreign banks, and ulti¬ 
 mately Mr. Chizzelem finds it easy to infuse a quantity of purely 
 accommodation-paper, representing no produce whatever, into the 
 general business. Then the bills themselves, what a combination 
 of delicacy and strength, of elegant design with scrip-like solidity, 
 there is about them ! If a tiling of beauty be really a joy for 
 ever, what eternal blessings has Mr. Chizzelem showered upon 
 the community by the circulation of these charming specimens 
 of the art of engraving. With what sublime modesty, too, he 
 refrains from allowing his own name to appear on the face of these 
 documents, being content to give the secretary all the honour of 
 being handed down to posterity as the official representative of the 
 concern. Care is taken to work the bill system with the largest 
 and best houses that can be secured, and the India and other 
 banks, finding that these houses do business with the Ali Baba, 
 do not hesitate to take the company’s paper. The outward cargoes 
 are paid for by creditors who are confiding enough to take the 
 company’s bills, not knowing the shares are fully paid up. Others, 
 with less faith in the managing director, require another name, 
 which is obtained by the hypothecation of freight of cargoes to 
 some of thoso accommodating firms always ready to assist Mr. 
 Chizzelem in his emergencies, in consideration of liberal commis¬ 
 sions on cargoes and freights. By this means the concern is 
 worked into a system of credit which it would be difficult for a 
 single trader, particularly one of Mr. Chizzelem’s antecedents, to 
 obtain. Liberal, too, in liis arrangements with those who con¬ 
 federate with him, the master spirit of the Ali Baba has a number 
 
29 
 
 of jackal firms at his command, who, eager to promote liis 
 interests and their own, apply for goods in all directions wherever 
 credit is to he obtained; send their orders regularly to the manu¬ 
 facturing and mining districts, giving references 'to the Ali Baba 
 Company or to the company’s bankers ; and ultimately draw 
 upon the company to pay for goods with the company’s paper or 
 their own. By the way in which Mr. Chizzelem operates he 
 secures the command of what really constitutes a large working 
 capital, by getting advances upon freight months before such 
 advances are received in due course by ordinary traders. For 
 instance, the shipper of rice holds a bill of lading at a nominal rate 
 of Is. per ton ; to secure payment of his bill Mr. Chizzelem, immed¬ 
 iately upon the vessel leaving the port of loading, offers the 
 selling of this cargo to a broker, on condition that the latter makes 
 him advances by his acceptances against the estimated margin 
 between the cost of the cargo and the price it would probably sell 
 for when delivered in this country; while shippers of the ordinary 
 jog-trot kind wait for the vessel to come in after a four months’ 
 passage, and to discharge, before they realise their cargoes. Thus, 
 with 40,000 or 50,000 tons afloat, the Ali Baba Company can 
 always have £80,000, or £100,000, to work upon in hand by tills 
 system of constant anticipation. One or two of the jackal firms 
 are valuable allies from their political connections, and the “tips” 
 obtained from head-quarters during the Abyssinian war prepara¬ 
 tions gave the Ali Baba Company and its confederate firms an 
 immense advantage over other firms who had no private arrange¬ 
 ments in Parliament. This explains the puzzle why Chizzelem 
 himself, who is a stanch Liberal (on paper), was found actively can¬ 
 vassing for the Conservative party at the last election. Ali! friends, 
 our politics are very much an affair of the pocket after all; and 
 Mr. Porcupine fears that the most ardent Conservatives who read 
 this paper would be found canvassing for Beales, for Odger, or 
 even for Podger, if £20,000 could be secured by the move. 
 
There are two other features of the Ali Baba Company which 
 to our mind and that of Mr. Chizzelem (when he has time to 
 chat about business) constitute its rounding charms. Both Mr. 
 Chizzelem and the shareholders are completely secured, not against 
 the failure of the concern—what human institution is secure' 
 against failure 1—but against any inconveniences or loss which, 
 under ordinary circumstances, are the result of failure. Mr. 
 Chizzelem’s life can, for example, be insured for an amount larger 
 than has ever before been insured on the life of a commoner, the 
 premium being paid out of the company’s own funds. Why, you 
 inquire, is this insurance effected? Were he suddenly to be re¬ 
 moved from this to a bet-we beg pardon—to another (shall 
 
 we say special 1) world, the company would sustain a loss of from 
 a quarter to half a million. Therefore the company will gladly 
 pay the premiums upon a life of such inestimable value. By-and- 
 by, probably, this premium will be compounded for by a payment 
 in cash (also from the funds of the Ali Baba), so as to prevent 
 the necessity of further premiums being paid; and when this is 
 accomplished the policy can be at any time converted either into 
 a landed estate, upon which Chizzelem may settle down in aris¬ 
 tocratic seclusion, or into cash, to be employed again in business 
 operations. 
 
 With regard to the shareholders they have nothing to fear, 
 even should the concern become involved; all the shares are paid 
 up ; and, owing to the happy state of the law, the creditors, so 
 far as we can ascertain, are unable themselves to prosecute an 
 inquiry into the company’s assets, if the shareholders themselves 
 are quiescent. 
 
 VI.—SHODDY SHIPS. 
 
 A friend of ours, when once examined upon some question of 
 quantities, with respect to which widely-discrepant evidence had 
 been given by a preceding witness, was asked how he could 
 
31 
 
 explain the discrepancy. “ My lord,” said he, “ I can only 
 account for it in this way—that Mr.-is of such an unfor¬ 
 
 tunate mental organisation that he often fails to perceive the 
 harmony that should at all times exist between words and facts.” 
 T^ould Lord Chesterfield have suggested a more courteous way of 
 giving the lie direct 1 And as Mr. Porcupine luxuriates in a 
 finely-rounded phrase, he has trotted this out just now to apply 
 to all persons who have the temerity to deny that we English 
 are an inventive people. Only the other day we read of a dis¬ 
 covery whereby printing-ink could be discharged from paper by 
 means of some alkaline solution, and the paper, clean and white 
 as a pocket-handkerchief from Professor Anderson’s magic 
 mangle, become available again for printing purposes. With 
 this fact in mind, would it be premature to anticipate the time 
 when the boy who delivers our Daily Post or Mercury will call 
 at the end of the week for the papers, in order that they may be 
 washed, ironed, and reprinted for our next week’s amusement 
 and instruction 1 Perhaps it would. At all events, there is no 
 harm in throwing out a hint to our daily contemporaries which 
 may find an application for the present to surplus or unsold 
 copies. But what we have chiefly in view now is to show at 
 what a rate inventiveness is marching with reference to the con¬ 
 struction of ships. Mr. Porcupine has lately turned his eye 
 somewhat curiously upon shipping matters, and is glad to find 
 that a few points which he has raised are now strongly agitating 
 what may be called the shipping mind. Let us hope good may 
 | come of it in the end. 
 
 Not long ago we heard of an invention for making ships of 
 pasteboard, and though as yet we are not aware whether any 
 craft of this description are afloat, the pasteboard idea will, we 
 fear, be thrown rather into the shade by the fact that ships are 
 now daily manufactured of “ shoddy,” and are afloat in very 
 large numbers. According to the dictionary definition, “ the 
 
32 
 
 shoddy trade is chiefly located at Dewsbury, in Yorkshirebut* 
 during the inquiries we have made within the last few weeks we 
 have found that Liverpool and some other ports do quite as lively 
 a trade in the article as applied to the manufacture of ships; 
 also, though it may sound rather paradoxical, that a “shoddy* 
 ship” is really manufactured with much greater ease than a 
 
 piece of shoddy cloth. 'la 
 
 You may, perhaps, imagine that the timbers of an old vessel 
 are taken to pieces, and that in this way the manufacturer vamps 
 up a ship which, when caulked and painted, would deceive the 
 most lynx-eyed of surveyors or underwriters. But, bless your 
 heart, no such roundabout method is employed. The whole 
 thing’ is done in the twinkling of an eye by merely changing the 
 ship’s name. But how, you ask, can a ship’s name be changed* 
 in defiance of a plain Act of Parliament to the contrary ? Even 
 as a priest, though he descend from ministrations at the altar to 
 ministrations at the brothel, is still a priest, are not the “ Isabella 
 Jane” and the “Anchor of Hope” the “Isabella Jane” and 
 “Anchor of Hope” to the end of the chapter, whatever ills 
 may betide them! By no means. You cannot suppose that 
 mere Acts of Parliament are to fetter the operations of Mercator 
 (of the firm of Mercator, Compound, and Slope), when the 
 Anglo-Africo-Indo-European Trading Company’s interests require 
 them to bo set aside 1 “ It is absurd,” Mercator may argue, “ to 
 pass laws to teach the shipowner his business or the duties 
 which he owes to society. What you have to do is to leave him 
 to himself, and it will all come right in the end.” And so, when 
 Mercator wants a fleet of ships or steamers to sell to a new com¬ 
 pany, or to trade with himself, he laughs at the Act of Parlia¬ 
 ment, and has them manufactured of shoddy on the shortest 
 notice. The Act of Parliament provides that there shall be no 
 alteration of name, except (if we recollect the clause rightly) the 
 vessel herself has been constructively changed by her stem and 
 
33 
 
 stem-post, and keel having been taken out, or alterations equally 
 material made. But if it is easy to ride it is easier to sail 
 through an Act of Parliament; and, as it is quite legal to re- 
 ehristen a foreign ship, the plan adopted is, when you want to 
 bring out an old and worn-out vessel as a new one, to convert 
 her into a foreigner, and have her registered over again. You 
 can then call your shoddy craft by what name you like; and, of 
 course, you adopt the inverse method, and select a name which 
 has hitherto been associated with a ship as stately and fortunate 
 as your own has been cranky and treacherous. For instance (we 
 adopt, for the purpose of illustration, assumed names, though 
 we have real ones at hand if they be preferred), the “ Emile St. 
 Jacques,” having worn herself out in the cotton and coal 
 carrying trades, emerges from the shoddy-mill as the “ Windsor 
 Palace,” an East Indiaman of first-class reputation. “The 
 Homester,” a steamer whose antics were a source of perpetual 
 anxiety, after undergoing an intermediate change to the “ York 
 Minster,” and adorning the prospectus of a mysterious company 
 for a few months as the “ Diluvian,” ultimately flowers into the 
 “ Bose of Castile f and the “ Bed Bepublican,” having gone 
 through every phase of marine disaster, including burning to the 
 water’s edge, is scraped, razeed, tinkered up, and dawns upon the 
 shipping world as the “ Copenhagen.” 
 
 And so on, the names of some vessels being changed four or 
 five times, until the underwriters, if their suspicions be excited, 
 are utterly bewildered in their search after the aliases, while con¬ 
 signees and passengers are lured into the belief that they are 
 trusting their property and their lives on board vessels of an 
 established character for speed and safety. We are reminded of 
 a case in point in which an acquaintance of our own was the 
 victim. He wished to go to Santander; and it was suggested 
 to him that, instead of travelling round by Madrid, he might 
 get a steamer direct from Liverpool. He looked about and saw 
 
34 
 
 the name of a steamer advertised which was new to him, the 
 “ Kara.” He booked accordingly, but had not been on board 
 many hours before an idea occurred to him that he had seen, or 
 felt, or known, in some way, the vessel before; and gradually, as 
 old recollections strengthened, he became aware that she was no 
 other than the “ Tatler,” a craft which twenty-two years pre¬ 
 viously had been notorious for her wild freaks at sea, and for the 
 annoyances and mishaps which consignees sustained through 
 her. 
 
 An inland reader may be curious to know the modus operandi 
 of this shoddy-ship manufacture. We will do our best to tell 
 him. There is, as you may suppose, a little bit of necromancy- 
 in it, and the medicine man, or alchemist, or juggler, or whatever 
 name you may choose to give him, is Herr Yon Dodger. We 
 are not aware that Herr Dodger was ever in the coal trade. All 
 we know is, that he was at one time a broker ; that he was not 
 brilliantly successful in that line ; and that ho has dropped into 
 his present business by what may be called the force of circum¬ 
 stances, just as Fagin dropped into the peculiar occupation which 
 he followed. Business has been brisk of late in Herr Dodder’s 
 way, and he has now one or two rivals ; but still they do not 
 affect him much, and the bulk of the transmuting art is per¬ 
 formed by liimself. The process, as we have hinted, is wonder¬ 
 fully expeditious, and, when explained, really as simple as the 
 plan adopted by the ingenious Yankee publican, who, the 
 morning after the liquor traffic was suspended in his town 
 announced himself as a “ plumber and glazier,” while the habitues 
 of the establishment, when asked round what they would “glaze,” 
 replied that they would glaze rum, or brandy, or whatever liquor 
 happened to be their favourite; and business speedily went on 
 as usual. When you want to make a shoddy ship, your old ship 
 being, say, the “Scum of the Ocean” or the “Leaky Lass,” you 
 have paper prepared for “ L’Alouette Doree,” “ El Espiritu de 
 
35 
 
 Verdad,” or some other equally mythical foreign ship, and -with 
 these in your hand you wait upon Herr Yon Dodger. Perhaps 
 you cannot see him all at once—he may he engaged until another 
 client on the same kind of business; so you either call again or 
 wait in the outer office, where the dirty little hoy on the high 
 stool is generally reading the “Wandering Jew” and eating 
 bread and cheese from a small newspaper parcel. When your 
 turn comes, and you liavo your tete-a-tete with the medicine man, 
 you show him the papers, and tell him you wish him to sell you 
 “L’Alouette” or “El Espiritu.” Mind, you don’t sell him the 
 “Leaky Lass” or the other vessel in the first instance. Herr 
 Dodger, if he once got possession of a real ship, old though she 
 were, might immediately sell her to the Firewood Company, 
 Limited, and retire upon the proceeds to his Fatherland. You 
 trust Herr Dodger only -within a small area; you hold the papers 
 before his eyes until he has examined them. He then signs a bill of 
 sale, and all that remains is to pay him the one or two guineas, in 
 accordance with the size of the transaction. You then call at the 
 Custom-house, state that you have purchased a foreign vessel, 
 and require her to be registered as the “ Queen of the Seas” or the 
 “Monarch of the Universe,” and the transaction is then complete. 
 Having given instructions for the new name to be painted up, in 
 letters of the exact length required by the Merchant Shipping 
 Act, over the vessel’s stem, you calmly go home to dinner. 
 
 So far, we have looked upon this question rather on its 
 ludicrous side; but the shield has its grave reverse. It is part 
 and parcel of a system of sham and fraud, of which our shipping 
 trade should be purged. So long as shoddy fleets can be impro¬ 
 vised at a day’s notice, we are not only putting our new -wine 
 into old bottles but we are spilling the wine of our honour as a 
 commercial people. Whatever may be said about “ relieving the 
 shipowner from protection,” let us, at all events, protect con¬ 
 signees and passengers, and even underwriters, by preventing an 
 
36 
 
 evasion of the law in the way practised by Herr Von Dodger 
 and his customers. The case might be met by an amendment of 
 the Act, so as to provide that, when vessels bought from 
 foreigners, but originally owned in England, are again bought by 
 Englishmen, they should assume the name which they previously 
 bore in this country, and that all vessels now registered in ficti¬ 
 tious names should return to the names in which they were at 
 first registered. Something of this kind, if we recollect right, 
 was at one time proposed. If it were reintroduced and passed, 
 we should at least know the real metal from the pinchbeck in 
 shipping, and be able to make our calculations accordingly ; Ilerr 
 Von Dodger could retire peacefully to his Fatherland; and 
 Dewsbury again become the capital of the realm of shoddy. 
 
 VII.—OCEAN THTTGGISM. 
 
 The recent heavy losses at sea, and the periodical increase of 
 shipping disasters in the face of improvements in science and 
 navigation, are apt to “ bid us pause” and ask how this comes to 
 pass. Can this waste of property and life be lessened ? Is it 
 not out of proportion to the increased amount of shipping 
 employed, when the improvements in skill and knowledge as 
 applied to shipping are considered; and does it not exceed by far, 
 after allowing for the peculiar risks, the waste and loss of property 
 incurred on land 1 The question does not affect the underwriters 
 only: it affects our national character as a maritime and com¬ 
 mercial people, and, involving as it does the safety of human 
 life, it demands the serious attention of the Legislature. Though 
 it may be quite true that the wrecks and losses which have 
 recently taken place are mainly attributable to the continuous 
 severity of the weather, it is also true that there is a great increase 
 in the number of vessels which are sent to sea in a condition 
 
37 
 
 palpably unfit to copo with its dangers, and of vessels which are 
 wilfully destroyed or cast away in order that insurances effected 
 far beyond the legitimate value of the property so insured may 
 bo realised. The question affects the public from these points: 
 That though it may suit the interest of an individual owner, who 
 has insured either a ship or a cargo beyond its intrinsic value, 
 that the ship and cargo shall be lost—either by deliberate design, 
 “ malice aforethought,” or by adopting so little precaution that 
 the probabilities are in favour of loss—a direct fraud is practised 
 upon the underwriters, and an amount of wealth which otherwise 
 woxdd bo distributed amongst the community is sent to the 
 bottom of the sea. It affects the Legislature, also, not only from 
 these points, but from that of the wanton imperilling and positive 
 sacrifice of human life which the system occasions; for if it bo 
 found that in the eagerness of commercial enterprise the safety 
 of life is lost sight of, it is both the right and the duty of 
 the Government to interpose. 
 
 It strikes one as anomalous that, in a business which has a 
 much wider range of risk than that involved by stationary prop¬ 
 erty, the precautions taken by underwriters on the one hand to 
 protect their interests, and the requirements of law on the other, 
 are so lax and insufficient. Why should underwriters, who 
 insure goods afloat, not adopt some plan of combination, some 
 measures of precaution and vigilance, which would render their 
 business a uniformly paying one % And if, in addition, a system 
 of inspection were enforced by the Government to check the 
 despatch of vessels overloaded and ill-found, we believe that the 
 underwriting-rates, which have of late years been increased by 
 fifteen and twenty per cent., and yet are unremunerative, would 
 fall to a natural and remunerative standard. 
 
 With regard to the loading of ships, there appears to be no 
 supervision worthy the name exercised either by the underwrit¬ 
 ers or the Board of Trade; vessels are continually leaving and 
 
38 
 
 arriving at tliis and other ports laden far beyond their capacity j 
 while the system of deck-loading is carried on with a recklessness 
 worthy the captain of a Yankee river steam-boat. 
 
 True, there is a Surveyor to the Board of Trade; but his duty 
 relates only to the inspection of forecastles and the new Act of 
 Parliament, and to signal lights. There are also local surveyors 
 paid by the Liverpool Underwriters’ Association, whose business 
 it is to see that vessels are not overloaded, and who, if they find a 
 vessel with an excessive cargo, make a private report on the subject 
 for the information of the Association. But they have no means of 
 preventing the vessel going to sea, however palpable may be her 
 unseaworthy condition. They may warn the captain that the vessel 
 is not, in their opinion, seaworthy, and the question may go to trial 
 before a jury should a claim arise against the underwriters. But 
 the difficulties of proof are great, the jury notoriously slow of 
 conviction, and often the total loss of both ship and crew makes 
 the production of corroborative evidence impossible. Even when 
 a case comes before the magistrates, in consequence of a crew 
 refusing to proceed in a ship which is proved to be unfit to 
 undertake a voyage, there is no law to prevent that ship from 
 still prosecuting the voyage if another crew can be found reckless 
 enough to take the risk. 
 
 In this, as in many other matters, we strain at a gnat and 
 swallow a camel. We are ruthlessly particular about overloading 
 a cab, an omnibus, or a railway-carriage, the worst result of which 
 would be but a temporary inconvenience; but we put no legisla- > 
 tive embargo upon the overloading of ships, and the risking of 
 property and life on a very large scale, when it is found that the 
 force of competition and the eagerness to get rich make men 
 oblivious of the safeguards which are the right of the community. 
 
 Some distinct enactment upon the subject of loading is 
 wanted—a restriction, in fact, similar to that imposed upon emi¬ 
 grant ships. We have Government inspection of mines, of 
 
39 
 
 schools, of poor-law boards—why not of ships? Though of course 
 the capacities of vessels differ greatly in proportion to their huild, 
 and one ship will often carry much more with perfect safety than 
 another of the same tonnage, it would surely not be difficult for 
 a trained nautical surveyor and inspector to administer the law 
 ■without imposing the hardship of underloading upon the sliip- 
 owner. The Underwriters’ Association of Liverpool have, wo 
 believe, a printed scale, showing how much what is technically 
 known as “ dry side,” varying in accordance with the depth of a 
 ship’s hold, there should bo out of the water; and, as a general 
 basis, no doubt this would be found sufficient. 
 
 In the Courts of Inquiry held by the Board of Trade into the 
 abandonment of vessels, particularly where there is a suspicion 
 that the ship has been scuttled or wilfully cast away, it is of the 
 utmost importance to discover if a motive exist for the crime. A 
 case of scuttling is closely analogous to one of murder, and in 
 cases of murder both judges and juries devote the closest atten¬ 
 tion to the analysis of evidence in order to elicit the motive, as 
 motive generally rules the verdict and creates the distinction 
 between murder and manslaughter. In a scuttling case the 
 motive is plunder, the underwriters being the victims, and there¬ 
 fore it is most vital that all documents connected with insurance 
 should be produced before the Court of Inquiry. Now, so far 
 as our observation goes, this is not the practice ; the question of 
 insurance being, for the most part, treated but vaguely and 
 generally. In dealing with the question of freight, if an owner 
 state that he had only such-and-such an amount insured on 
 freight, the question should in all cases be put to him—whether 
 he had not already received from the charterers of the ship a 
 large advance which they had insured. It is usual with ships 
 chartered for long voyages—say, to the East Indies and to China 
 —for two-thirds of the freight to be advanced in cash. For 
 Bombay the payments in cash on the vessel’s sailing sometimes 
 
40 
 
 amount to four-fifths of the entire freight. In many cases, too, 
 old and consequently very cheap vessels have been bought for 
 the express purpose of making these large East India and China 
 freights available for the purchase-money, and frequently the 
 amount of freight advanced has actually covered the purchase- 
 money of the vessel. Ships of this character are, of course, in 
 the majority of instances, quite unequal to undertaking long 
 voyages. Under these circumstances, how necessary is it for the 
 court to be informed what amount has been insured by the ship¬ 
 owner on the freight; how much advanced to him by the 
 charterer of the vessel on account of the freight; for how much 
 the vessel herself is insured ; Avhat was her first cost; whether 
 the whole of the sixty-four sixty-fourths into which every ship 
 is divided belong to him, and, if not, whether his co-owners 
 have any separate insurances on their shares ; and whether he 
 has indirectly effected insurances in the name of his insurance 
 broker or other parties. 
 
 The question should also be asked if the ship or any portion 
 of her be mortgaged, and whether the mortgagee has not effected 
 an insurance to cover his advances, irrespective of the insurance 
 effected by the owner, as instances have been known where the 
 owner has transferred the ship to his son, to enable him to 
 become the mortgagee, both parties insuring—one as owner, the 
 other as mortgagee. Were this fact elicited when the inquiry 
 was held, the underwriters would discover that the father and son 
 had really but one interest, and would of course decline to pay 
 the two claims. The jugglery which may be practised with insur¬ 
 ances and mortgages upon ships was very forcibly shown in a 
 recent case, where the ship had been transferred to the owner’s 
 son, who was a minor. A mortgage executed by the father as the 
 guardian of a minor proved to bo invalid in law, and the mort¬ 
 gagees, who had recovered from the underwriters on the policies 
 they held, were obliged to disgorge the amount. 
 
41 
 
 If questions like these were put we venture to say that many 
 a case of wilful and malicious abandonment would bo detected for 
 which now captain and owners escape punishment. We all 
 remember the case of the “ Severn," and the iniquities which that 
 investigation disclosed—iniquities which had been practised for 
 years, and which were so far suspected that the parties concerned 
 found it necessary to register the vessel in another name, in order 
 to effect an insurance. But the ‘‘ Severn” case is not alone. Others 
 could be cited in which owners have conspired for the abandon¬ 
 ment of ship after ship, where the insurances have been paid in 
 full, but where, the captains or actual perpetrators of the crime 
 having been kept out of the country, justice has been thwarted. 
 
 We have now before us the report of a case in which a vessel 
 was thus abandoned, but in which the evidence was unfortunately 
 not clear and strong enough criminally to implicate the owners, 
 though in their official report upon the subject the members of 
 the court plainly state their opinion that the scheme of abandon¬ 
 ment had been deliberately planned long beforehand. It is 
 believed, in fact, that the hole-boring operation was actually per¬ 
 formed in dock before the vessel herself sailed, a plug being 
 inserted which could easily be removed when the scheme of aban¬ 
 donment could be conveniently carried out. In this case the 
 vessel was insured in distant offices for an amount greatly exceed¬ 
 ing her value, but no evidence was forthcoming at the inq uir y as 
 to the insurance upon her cargo. 
 
 This question of wilful abandonment is not, we repeat, a 
 question affecting a class: it is of national importance. Property 
 should be as secure from fraud and piracy afloat as on shore; and 
 in obtaining more effectual control over the despatch of vessels, 
 and in the quick extirpation of these Thugs of the Sea, we have 
 all a common interest. 
 
42 
 
 VIII—THE DIDDELEM AND LAFFATEM 
 COMPANY, AND THE PIG-IRON RIG. 
 
 Oxe of the distinctive attributes of genius is the power to invest 
 with refinement and beauty objects which to ordinary observers 
 are gross and dull. Genius breathes upon the field, and the dry 
 bones are quickened and marshalled into an army. Slimy and 
 foetid refuse, under the wand of genius, is made to yield dyes 
 more exquisite than the Tyrian purple; from petroleum is dis¬ 
 tilled the nectar of the gods; from the excrement of St. Giles’ 
 are evolved the odours of Elysium. No wonder, then, that on 
 the morning when our friend, Mr. Chizzelem, announced his 
 intention to turn his mind to pig-iron the chosen confidants of 
 that intention were in ecstasies. The goose that laid the golden 
 eggs was a barren and profitless creature compared with the sow 
 which, overshadowed by Chizzelem’s embrace, was about to farrow 
 unlimited litters of golden pigs. The favoured few, who were 
 honoured by Mr. Chizzelem’s invitation to join him in the specu¬ 
 lation vulgarly known as the “ Pig-iron rig,” already saw piles of 
 the baser metal transformed by the modern Midas into ingots of 
 silver and bars of gold. But Mr. Chizzelem himself went into 
 pig-iron -with medicinal views. He wanted a tonic. He had been 
 a little unstrung by the comparative failure of two steam-ship 
 speculations which ho had promoted; and, as men seek change 
 of air and chalybeate draughts when their system is relaxed, so 
 he sought a new operation, and change from the old shipping 
 groove, with the same object. The Diddelem and Laffatem Steam¬ 
 ship Company was one of these speculations. The egg was laid; 
 but ill-natured and suspicious people blew upon it, and it became 
 addled. Subscriptions to the amount of a few thousand pounds were 
 obtained; but the prospectus was not carried out; the boats which 
 
43 
 
 it promised remained in nubibus; and Mr. Chizzelem, to console 
 himself, and at the same time do a little business, retained the 
 subscriptions, and gave the shareholders, in return, two old boats 
 suitably rechristened, which we believe are still running, but to 
 and from what ports nobody knows. A few shareholders have 
 now and then attempted to move the Court of Chancery in this 
 matter, but nothing comes of it; a representation is made on the 
 other side that the two vessels represent the company’s assets, 
 and are being worked for their benefit; and, as no one person is 
 largely enough interested to justify any lavish expenditure upon 
 investigation, the affair is allowed to “ slide.” 
 
 The Antipodal and European Steam-packet Association was 
 altogether a more ambitious affair. It was not Mr. Chizzelem’s 
 own speculation : Messrs. Jerry, Bounce & Co., Messrs. Kyte, 
 Flyer & Bustupp, and other eminent firms, were associated in 
 the undertaking. The capital was large. The prospectus was an 
 admirable and stimulative treatise on steam navigation, winch left 
 the impression upon your mind that an investment in Antipodal 
 shares was not only the easiest way to make a fortune, but to 
 restore the equipoise to commercial affairs, and secure the universal 
 happiness of mankind. Surely such a combination of blessings 
 would not long remain unappropriated. So it was, however. To 
 float the company it was deemed necessary to rig the market. In 
 order to convince the public of the desirability of the investment, 
 the directors offered a premium for the shares; and men who 
 were pretty sure of an allotment being made to them, sold their 
 shares before they applied for them, taking care to apply for three 
 or four times the number they had actually sold, in order to meet 
 the contingency of the allotment being only one-third or one-fourth 
 of tho number applied for. 
 
 The premium to which the directors ran up the shares within 
 a week of the issue of the prospectus was so high that the public 
 sold out to a large extent, expecting to be able to buy back at a 
 
44 
 
 lower price, and so make a huge profit. The directors, on the 
 other hand, were hound to go on buying all the shares that 
 offered, or the whole scheme might have fallen through before 
 the shares had been applied for and the deposits made; and when 
 all the applications for shares had come in it was found that the 
 directors had bought so many shares, and that the premiums 
 amounted to so enormous a sum, that to escape a severe loss they 
 must change their front entirely. Mr. Chizzelem was consulted* 
 and for a moment ho looked puzzled. It was but for a moment, 
 however. The crisis awoke his demon (who for once was having 
 a nap), and Mr. Chizzelem promptly explained that what they 
 had now to do was to buy from the public at any price, and not 
 to allot the shares at alL The directors, therefore, bought more 
 shares, returned the deposits to all the applicants, and refused to 
 make any allotment. They then called upon the brokers from 
 whom they had bought the shares to deliver them—an impossible 
 duty, as the shares were, for the most part, already in the hands 
 of the board. Thus, Mr. Cluzzelem and his friends had all the 
 bears in a string, and could demand their own price. Flushed 
 with the success of the scheme, the directors did not hesitate to 
 declare that they would exact their own terms; and Mr. Chizzelem, 
 who found in this turn of affairs a fine opening for revenging him¬ 
 self upon his many private enemies, gloated over the opportunity 
 which Providence (as he declared) had placed in his way of put¬ 
 ting on the screw. Put “ there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 rough hew them as we may,” and this divinity revealed itself in 
 the London Stock Exchange. The story of the Antipodal Board 
 and their doings was laid before that body; and, to the relief of 
 the public, and to the gnashing of the teeth of the Antipodal 
 Board, the Stock Exchange refused a settlement, which had the 
 effect of cancelling all the bargains in the shares. 
 
 Hence Mr. Chizzelem’s tears and chagrin, and hence the desir¬ 
 ability of change of treatment. He began, in fact, to wonder 
 
45 
 
 whether his faculties had lost their fine edge. “Be I flat?” 
 pathetically exclaims Tom Hood’s waggoner, after being run over; 
 and when assured by the sympathising spectators that he is not 
 flat, lie joyfully remarks, “ Ah, then, I’so soon come round.” It 
 was to bring himself round—to perform something that would 
 convince him that he was himself again—that Mr. Cliizzelem 
 went into pig-iron. 
 
 It may be as well to explain to some of our readers, who are 
 not versed in the mysteries of commerce, that pig-iron is an article 
 in which largo transactions often take place without the produc¬ 
 tion or even existence of the article itself as a feature of the 
 bargain. Men will, for instance, sell to the extent of 10,000 or 
 20,000 tons, without even having possessed, or intending to 
 possess, a single ton of iron. These are called “time bargains;” 
 and, when the day of delivery arrives, the difference is paid over 
 in cash. The Pig-iron Confederation consisted of Barnacles’ Bank, 
 !Mr. M'Clinclier, the broker, and a few ’cute Glasgow men. It was 
 arranged that each of the speculators was to receive a share of the 
 profits in proportion to the amount of assistance rendered in the 
 operations—the bankers,'of course, getting the largest share, as the 
 financing responsibility rested with them. 
 
 When matters were in train, the Confederates began to buy, 
 through M‘Clincher, the broker, all the pig-iron which they could 
 obtain—until they had bought many thousands of tons more than 
 at that time really existed. When the day for settlement came 
 they adopted the unusual alternative of declining to receive the 
 . differences of value, and insisted upon the actual iron, or the 
 warrants for it, being handed over to them. By this course they 
 compelled the sellers to buy the stock which they themselves (the 
 Confederation) entirely owned; and, of course, being able to exact 
 their own terms, they squeezed every man according to his means. 
 But though at first the operation promised to be a signal success, 
 it was in many cases more tedious than the Confederates had 
 
46 
 
 anticipated; and, as legal processes in Scotland are not so expe¬ 
 ditious as in English courts, there was a good deal of delay in 
 that quarter. In the meantime, the production of pig-iron was 
 stimulated by the enormous, though artificial, increase in value 
 caused hy the operations of the Confederates; and, as iron ore is 
 obtainable in unlimited quantities, and only requires smelting to 
 convert it into pigs, fresh furnaces were opened in the iron dis¬ 
 tricts and kept at work day and night, until, in a wonderfully 
 short time, so large a quantity of iron was produced that the re¬ 
 action took place; and the purchases of the Confederation having 
 been entirely speculative, and not the result of actual demand, 
 the price of the article rapidly fell. The failure of Barnacles’ 
 Bank was in a great measure attributable to the enormous amount 
 of accommodation-bills (representing some millions of money) 
 which had been given by the Confederation for the iron they 
 had bought, and with which the bank was crammed. Kor was 
 Barnacles’ the only bank involved, the fall of the Universal Credit 
 and Discount Bank having been also mainly caused by the same 
 speculation. The ingenuity of the Confederation in regard to 
 accommodation-bills was, perhaps, never more severely taxed than 
 dining these critical operations. On one occasion, bankers who 
 had received bills with the indorsement of the eminent firm of 
 Ware in g Brothers upon them (the bills being in all respects fac¬ 
 similes of the foreign bills passing through the hands of that 
 house) discounted them at once; but, on their being presented to 
 the firm of Wareing Brothers, they were declared to be a forgery. 
 A Confederate was at once sent for, and, on being closeted with , 
 the manager, one of the bills and its indorsement were pointed 
 out to him. “ That is a forgery, sir,” said the banker with due 
 solemnity. “We have seen all the partners and ascertained that 
 there is not such a signature in the firm. We should have de¬ 
 clined discounting this bill for you, because wo object to the nature 
 of your transactions. We got it from one of our customers, and 
 
47 
 
 we took it without hesitation, because it appeared to us to be a 
 bill which had been received by you as cash, and because it bears 
 the names of continental and American firms usually indorsed on 
 Wareing Brothers’ bills. We therefore took it upon the faith 
 that it was their signature, and we now find ourselves grossly 
 deceived.” “My dear sir,” replied the Confederate, with his 
 pleasant and winning smile, “I never told you it was the Wareing 
 Brothers. You leaped to that conclusion yourself. In fact, I never 
 saw you about the bill: you did not discount it for me. I will 
 soon convince you, however, that the misapprehension is entirely 
 your own; for I will take you to the firm myself.” The astonished 
 manager was thereupon conducted to a small dingy office, on the 
 top story, in a neighbouring street, upon the door of wliich was 
 printed “ Wareing Brothers and Co.” The brothers happened to 
 be out at that moment, and a scrap of paper pinned to the door 
 intimated that the firm had “ Gone on ’Change.” Nothing more 
 could be done for the present; but the Confederate, as the manager 
 and he were descending the stairs, took the opportunity of explain¬ 
 ing that Messrs. Wareing Brothers were two very worthy young 
 men who had been brought up in his own office, and for whom 
 he had an almost paternal regard. It was certainly a remarkable 
 coincidence that their name was spelled exactly in the same way 
 
 as that of the great historic firm, but it was a coincidence_ 
 
 nothing more—for which he (the Confederate) was not account¬ 
 able ; and having now arrived at the foot of the staircase, he 
 wished the banker a very good morning. 
 
 IX.—FINANCIAL DEMONOLOGY. 
 
 The disclosures made this week relative to the Barnacles Bank 
 swindle have suggested a few remarks on one or two phases of 
 Financial Demonology, as a postscript to our recent Papers. The 
 fefcts as to the Barnacles affair may be thus summed up:_Two- 
 
48 
 
 thirds of the shares were taken in the names of adventurers and 
 dummies, who wexe either co-conspirators with or creatures of 
 the Barnacles family. Deeds have been executed by Barnacles 
 and his satellites, and assented to by the liquidators, under 
 which compromises have been made with regard to the larger | 
 proportion of the indebtedness and liabilities to the Bank, and 
 these accounts have now passed away from the creditors’ 
 jurisdiction. In many cases, it appears, the professional liqui-1 
 dators acted as trustees under these deeds—an arrangement 
 which probably accounts for the fact that the men who have 
 made these compromises appear to be the only class of debtors 
 who have not suffered in mind, body, or estate. Having placed 
 themselves in this equivocal position, the liquidators must either 
 satisfactorily explain, or leave the public to infer that they have 
 grossly abused their trust. The liabilities of tradesmen have 
 been for the most part fairly met, while the higher class of 
 traders have in many instances endeavoured to shirk their 
 responsibilities by every dodge that perverted human nature and 
 the ingenuity of lawyers could devise. In their protracted length 
 the Barnacles law proceedings are likely to exceed those of 
 “ Jamdyce v. Jamdyce.” The assets so far realised form but 
 one-eighth of the amount estimated at the commencement of the 
 liquidation, and the whole process is so involved in technicality 
 and difficulty that the creditors, even when they establish their 
 claims, waste the substance of their property in the effort; while, 
 on the other hand, the law affords such facilities for evasion that * 
 an ingenious or unscrupulous debtor often escapes scot-free. Ho 
 doubt all this is very amusing to the Barnacles family them¬ 
 selves, who, having escaped with all the convertible plunder, 
 including their salaries due to the time when the bank shutters 
 were closed, cannot see why such a fuss should be made in 
 London and Liverpool. Ultimately the tribe and their con¬ 
 federates may be reached by a criminal prosecution; and therefore 
 
49 
 
 in the meantime we will leave Barnacles pere enjoying the sunny 
 otium afforded by his Genoese family villa. Nor will wo trouble 
 ourselves to inquire from what cave of Aladdin one of the junior 
 Barnacles drew forth that £20,000 which he has recently 
 invested in a London partnership. 
 
 The lesson we have to learn from the collapse of the 
 Barnacles bubble, from the failure of other Limited Banks, and 
 from tho escape by the skin of its teeth of an existing banking 
 company, is that, either by force of law or by tho combined 
 influence of shareholders and depositors, all banks shall in future 
 be prevented from becoming indirectly speculative traders on 
 their own account. Managers and directors may plead the good 
 intention of recovering an apparently bad or doubtful debt, but 
 really they are squandering their shareholders’ and depositors’ 
 money in propping up insolvent debtors, and giving them a 
 larger scope for obtaining fictitious credit. 
 
 The Quicksand Bank was, perhaps, the heaviest local offender 
 in this respect. Immersed to the neck in questionable paper, 
 the bank took over the business of defaulting speculators with 
 the vague hope of being reimbursed for its advances. For years 
 it sailed ships belonging to old estates, the only persons bene¬ 
 fited by tho arrangement being the directors, the manager, and 
 their relatives and friends, who profited in various capacities by 
 the purchase and sale of cargoes of produce. But the ostensible 
 object of the arrangement—that of reducing the indebtedness to 
 the bank—was never realised at all. When it became difficult 
 to rediscount, in consequence of the same names occurring 
 repeatedly on the bills, the Quicksand coerced firms, who were 
 indebted to the bank, to accept, under a guarantee, bills of which 
 those firms themselves had no knowledge, and in which they 
 were in no way interested ; and thus they succeeded, for a time, 
 in changing the aspect of tho paper which, by this means, 
 could not so easily be detected when offered for rediscount. 
 
50 
 
 Miserable devices all—ending in discomfiture, demoralisation 
 and ruin. 
 
 Occasionally, with a debtor of Sir. Chizzelem’s genius and 
 tact, for instance, the bank does succeed in recouping its loss. 
 But, in the long run, the community of trade suffers, and in the 
 meantime Sir. Chizzelem has to be watched with lynx-eyed 
 vigilance; and, even when the arrangement succeeds with men of 
 the Chizzelem stamp, there must be a conjuncture of peculiar 
 circumstances. Thus:—Sir. Chizzelem may want funds to buy 
 steamers for the Ali Baba Company. A war is on the tapis, and 
 Sir. Chizzelem, through his political influence, has the earliest 
 information as to transport contracts. Now, the Britannia Metal 
 Bank, Limited—which Mr. Chizzelem favours with his account 
 —does not care one rap for Chizzelem per st. But by his last 
 failure the bank was a heavy sufferer; nor was the full extent of 
 their loss known until the bills and other securities placed in the 
 hands of the bank had been weighed in the balances and found 
 wanting in genuineness of indorsement and in value for realisa¬ 
 tion. Mr. Chizzelem, as we have before hinted, is a man of 
 large experience and sagacity. He, too, can help a friend at a 
 pinch—when it serves his purpose. He did so with Mr. 
 Bumptious on one occasion, and carried Bumptious triumphantly 
 through—the only equivalent exacted in return being, that Chiz¬ 
 zelem’s own claim as a creditor should be paid in full. Of 
 course, an arrangement of this kind is kept a secret from the 
 general creditors, who merely see Mr. Chizzelem on his philan¬ 
 thropic and public-spirited side, and are reconciled to receiving 
 their dividend of f d. on hundreds when they notice the cheerful 
 grace with which Mr. Chizzelem volunteers to accept the same 
 amount upon thousands. The arrangement is afterwards worked 
 through between Messrs. Chizzelem and Bumptious; and the 
 former, by retaining all the securities at his debtor’s command, 
 and subsequently taxing the acknowledged energy and ability of 
 
51 
 
 Mr. Bumptious to obtain lucrative freights, ultimately recovers 
 his debt. 
 
 Now, applying this to the Ali Baba Company : The prime 
 essential to the success of a company with a mythical capital 
 like the Ali Baba is a wide and unimpeachable credit. We have 
 already described the ingenious bill arrangements for gaining 
 such credit; but for the purchase of vessels suddenly, or during 
 a supreme crisis like that of a war, cash is indispensable. That 
 is, men in Mr. Chizzelem’s position require cash. Mr. Chiz- 
 zelera, therefore, suggests to the Britannia Metal Bank, Limited, 
 the same operation which he has himself performed with Mr. 
 Bumptious, and he clearly shows them that if they will advance 
 him the necessary money to purchase the vessels which he 
 requires he will be able to fepay his old liability to them in full, 
 giving them in the meantime the security of the ships purchased 
 with such advances. All that he stipulates for in return is that 
 the manager and the Britannia Metal directors shall, until the 
 operation is completed, bolster up liis credit in quarters where it 
 is imperilled, and, by good words judiciously dropped in their 
 various commercial walks, aid him in gaining credit for the Ali 
 Baba in new quarters. 
 
 Of course, the risk that is incurred by new creditors is no 
 affair of the Britannia Metal directors. What they have to see 
 to is the payment of their own debt, and they agree to the terms 
 accordingly. They watch Mr. Chizzelem narrowly, as may be 
 supposed, but the directors aro themselves well versed in the 
 value of ships, and in making these advances they keep that 
 sharply in view. But as most of the vessels aro purchased by 
 Mr. Chizzelem from the liquidators of insolvent estates, there is 
 an additional guarantee that the sales will be bargains, and that 
 should the Ali Baba not be able to employ them lucrati vely, the 
 Britannia Metal directors can easily turn them into cash. So 
 the game is gradually played out. When, incidentally, the 
 
name of Mr. Chizzelem crops up, the manager and directors 
 admit that his practice is, perhaps, a little sharp, hut that his 
 cleverness and capacity are unbounded. Latterly, they insinuate 
 that his success has been prodigious; that the advance in freights 
 has won him a golden harvest; and that he has made a fortune 
 in rice and produce alone. When the bank lodgers show an 
 equipoise of the account there is private exultation in the 
 Britannia Metal parlour, but also a private resolve to let Mr. 
 Chizzelem drop now. It would be injudicious to make him 
 advances on extensive work upon which contractors would have 
 a prior claim for unpaid instalments, and which would, if pressed 
 to a sale, perhaps, from the peculiar nature of the property, not 
 realise the amount expended upon it. Mr. Chizzelem is, there¬ 
 fore, left to his own resources; and if he complains that he is 
 hardly dealt with, ho is told that the Britannia Metal is, after 
 all, only a Provincial Bank, and that it cannot afford longer to 
 incur the frowns and prohibitions of the great maternal in¬ 
 stitution. 
 
 We have cited this as an example of the curious compacts 
 made by precocious modern banks. Be viewing the events of 
 the past few years, the amount of mischief produced by the 
 eagerness of pushing and reckless institutions to take up specu¬ 
 lative accounts and indiscriminate discounting on the one hand, 
 and the imposture and fraud to which they have become parties 
 on the other, has been appalling. Criminal prosecutions have 
 been in many cases averted only by the feeling that the negligence 
 and credulity on the part of managers, which would have been 
 thus exposed, would have swamped the concern. The morale of 
 business must be low indeed when it becomes necessary to com¬ 
 pound a felony rather than incur the disgrace of a prosecution. 
 A breath of fresh air on this subject comes by the last mail from 
 the Cape. There a bank manager has been sent to five years’ 
 hard labour as a convict for duping his employers. 
 
53 
 
 Let us hope that here we have seen the worst; that the tide 
 will turn now; and that with it will come a keener vigilance on 
 the part of shareholders themselves, which will prevent the pos¬ 
 sibility of unsound and worthless firms preying like vampires 
 upon the life-blood of commerce. There is plenty of business to 
 be done in discounting bond fide bills, and advancing against 
 produce, with real security and an ample margin to cover the 
 fluctuations. Of this the sound and healthy position of those 
 Liverpool banks which have withstood the gambling enticements 
 of the past few years, adhered to legitimate banking principles, 
 and by that policy have done their best to protect the interests 
 of honest and legitimate traders, affords ample proof. 
 
 X.-THE MORAL. 
 
 After looking at Pickersgill’s painting, “The Flight of the 
 Pagan Deities before the Genius of Christianity,” the feature 
 that you remember, and that haunts you continually when you 
 think of the subject, is the expression of rage and hatred, fear 
 and impotence, which the painter has imparted to the faces of 
 the deities, as, dethroned and disgraced, they are driven down¬ 
 wards to darkness and extinction. Such looks Mr. Porcupine 
 has of late encountered in plenty from men who, filling niches 
 in the temple of commerce, feel themselves tottering on their 
 pedestals from the blast of wholesome exposure to which they 
 have been, during the last few weeks, subjected. Probably they 
 fear that, erelong, they too may be driven “ down to the gulf 
 from whence is no return.” Well, let them go. The atmos¬ 
 phere of our Liverpool Exchange would be purer and more 
 wholesome if some hundred men who now frequent it were 
 exported by an early ship to Norfolk Island. The late Eyre 
 Evans now and then stammered out a satire that scorched like 
 
54 
 
 molten lava. When told of the death of a man who, in his 
 day, had sown his full share of tares on the field of commerce, 
 Mr. Evans remarked, “ D-d-ead, is he ? Thank G-o-god; the 
 average of m-m-ankind is raised.” So with our local hundred. 
 Better would it have been for them—better for mankind—if in 
 early life a millstone had been hanged about their necks and 
 they had been cast into the sea. 
 
 But while Mr. Porcupine has had to encounter the scowls of 
 traders who, in these sketches of a system, have seen their own 
 imago reflected, he has been encouraged by tributes of warm 
 v approval and sympathy from a host of men, many of them per¬ 
 sonally unknown to him, who have expressed their joy that a 
 practical attempt has been made to exorcise the demons which 
 have played such havoc with our trade. For the present he 
 intends to pause—hoping, believing, that some comprehensive 
 action will be taken by commercial men themselves on the one 
 hand, by the Legislature on the other, to check the frauds and 
 to reform the abuses which are so rank and strong in our midst. 
 We do not pause for lack of material. The tendency of filth 
 is to accumulate, and we have our desk full of scraps of 
 biography which may in future be occasionally used for rebuke 
 or warning, as the necessity arises. Nor are the frauds to which 
 we have alluded confined to the shipping trade. Mr. Bounce, 
 for instance—who has grown rich upon a series of prosperous 
 failures, and who, the morning after his last composition (we 
 forget whether it was in farthings or in halfpence), was found by a 
 creditor trying a splendid purchase in horseflesh—has his counter¬ 
 part in other trades. Mr. Bounce is rivalled in his taste for the 
 drama, in his elegant presentations to actresses, in his private 
 hospitalities and luxurious equipages, in the intensity of his 
 selfishness, by men in cotton and produce. One man having 
 obtained an advance upon a bill of lading for cotton, presents 
 elsewhere a duplicate bill, and obtains a duplicate advance. 
 
55 
 
 Another, anticipating his speedy failure, buys one of the hand¬ 
 somest houses on the Cheshire side, and the evening before his 
 creditors meet holds high carnival with 150 chosen friends, who 
 drink his wine and admire the last addition to his plate, wliicli 
 he declares is dirt cheap at 200 guineas. In the morning this 
 commercial Belshazzar makes his arrangements with the creditors, 
 and flatters himself that no “ Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” will ever 
 be written on his wall. Some of our biographies relate to forged 
 bills, with which firms of “ old standing” have been so tainted 
 that they have only escaped transportation by mortgaging the 
 reputation and the fortunes of their family and friends. With 
 a tradesman, or a man of small mark, this would be called com¬ 
 pounding a felony ; with a merchant or a broker it is a “ private 
 arrangement.” There is no town so fertile in these private 
 arrangements as Liverpool; there is no town in which a design, 
 originating in mercy and tenderness, has been so shamefully 
 perverted and abused. In London, Manchester, and other large 
 towns, there is more or less publicity attached, which at least 
 has the effect of diminishing premeditated failures and comprom¬ 
 ises, and inducing caution as to future transactions with the 
 defaulting trader. In Liverpool an impenetrable haze invests 
 these operations, under the cover of which the accountants and 
 lawyers who love darkness rather than light, because their deeds 
 are evil, lay their stratagems and toils. Our biographical collec¬ 
 tion is rich in post-nuptial settlements, and in all the ramifica¬ 
 tions of jugglery which, adopting the guise of provision for a 
 wife, make her particejps criminis in the robbery of creditors. 
 Our rogues’ portrait gallery has a larger scope than Major Greig’s. 
 It includes photographs of men who make a trade of destroying 
 ships in order to pocket the insurances; men who, having 
 bartered their souls for gold, have no scruple, when the oppor¬ 
 tunity offers and the price is high enough, to sell the safety and 
 honour of their country; men who, having violated evexy 
 
56 
 
 principle of justice in their own private affairs, are still retained 
 on the magisterial bench; men who varnish up an insolvent 
 business, palm it upon the public for lialf-a-million, and retire 
 with the plunder to some gay foreign capital; men who, out¬ 
 wardly great in charity and good works, are inwardly ravening 
 wolves ; who, robbing widows’ houses for six days, make long 
 prayers on the seventh—staining the name of benevolence, 
 dishonouring the temple of God. Bah ! the very catalogue is 
 sickening. Can w'e hope to prosper, do we deserve to prosper, 
 while we cherish unconvicted felons and traitors 1 Can we 
 wonder at the depression and demoralisation which are withering 
 our retail trade 1 
 
 We have much hope in the new Bankruptcy Bill as a means 
 of preventing fraudulent private compositions, administering 
 assets more beneficially to all the creditors of an estate, and 
 holding criminal procedure in terrorem over men who, unimpelled 
 to honesty from within, require to be restrained from dishonesty 
 from without. Our own Chamber of Commerce, and particu¬ 
 larly the special committee of merchants and lawyers which has 
 had the subject of commercial immorality under its more detailed 
 consideration, have done excellent service to the community by 
 the vigorous way in which they have grappled with the question, 
 and by the practical suggestions they liave made to secure a 
 sharper and more trenchant power to the new bill. The scandal 
 and the mischief which have resulted from secured creditors 
 being allowed to vote on equal terms with unsecured creditors in 
 the appointment of trustees or liquidators will, it is hoped, not 
 long continue. It has often occurred that in Liverpool the interest 
 of secured creditors lies in keeping a speculative trader afloat, and, 
 having the power fully to protect themselves, they are careless of 
 the claims of others. The men who are secured devour the meat, and 
 contemptuously fling a dividend of bare bones to the unsecured. 
 
 Upon some points the bill is not so explicit as that intro- 
 
67 
 
 duced by Lord Cairns, but no doubt in passing through Parlia¬ 
 ment it will be rounded into more practical completeness. "With 
 respect to the liability of after-acquired property to the payment 
 of old debts, we confess that, if the principle be admitted at all, 
 wc cannot see why it should not be applied to the full amount of 
 20s. hi the pound. The suggestion, too, made by Mr. Squarey, 
 at the meeting on Wednesday, that, if imprisonment for debt be 
 still inflicted (in cases where credit has been obtained by fraud or 
 false pretence), it should not be restricted to debts of £50, 
 ■will we hope, be brought forcibly under the attention of the 
 Attorney-General. If we are to have imprisonment in any form, 
 let the leviathan rogues as well as the minnows be imprisoned. 
 
 But though law may help us much in defining the limit of 
 legitimate risk and speculation, and in punishing the transgres¬ 
 sion of that limit, there is a wide range of swindling so delicately 
 and ingeniously organised as to be intangible by law, and which 
 can only be supplanted by the cultivation of public virtue. 
 In this we can all co-operate. Ministers of religion, journalists, 
 bankers, all men engaged in trade, can help each other in 
 this good work. Let ministers forsake, for a time at least, 
 the regions of speculative or controversial theology, and more 
 frequently and fervently preach the truths that tend to leaven 
 the life and quicken the conscience. Let journalists boldly 
 denounce commercial knavery; and even should Mr. Bounce, 
 Mr. Bilker, or Mr. Chizzelem threaten a withdrawal of their ad¬ 
 vertisements, or summon the editor for libel—let them denounce 
 it still. Let bankers coalesce to stamp out the system of accom¬ 
 modation-bills; and, remembering the fable of the tortoise and 
 the hare, restrict themselves to the operations for which banking 
 was established, and by which banking, conducted with ordinary 
 care, will always be profitable. The rage for gambling induced 
 by the American war is not yet allayed; our blood is still hot 
 and distempered from that fever. The greed of wealth, the wor- 
 
 / 
 
58 
 
 ship of gold, the eagerness to clutch the benefits and to shirk 
 the responsibilities of speculation, the utter recklessness of conse¬ 
 quences so far as others are concerned, the laxity of public opinion 
 upon questions of commercial criminality, are the plague-spots of 
 our business and social life. Let us haste to apply the remedy 
 while yet the opportunity remains. We have followed Baal 
 long enough; let us now turn and worship at a purer shrine. 
 
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