arcana of which place, with its curious intricacies
and perplexing paradoxical systems and principles, I shall now,"
continued our friend, "endeavour to explain; from which exposition the
public will be able to see the monster that is feeding on the vitals
of the country, while smiling in its face and tearing at its heart,
yet cherished by it, as the Lacedemonian boy cherished the wolf that
devoured him. I am an enemy to all monopolies," said Principal, "and
this is one of the worst the country is infested with. "A private or
exclusive market, that is, a market ~131~~into which the public have
not the liberty or privilege of either going to make, or to see made,
bargains in their own persons, is one where the most sinister arts
are likely to prevail. The Stock Exchange is of this description, and
accordingly is one where the public are continually gulled out of their
money by a system of the most artful and complicated traffic--a traffic
calculated to raise the hopes of novices, to puzzle the wits of out-door
speculators, and sure to have the effect of diminishing the property of
those who are not members of the fraternity.{15}

"One of the principles of the Stock Exchange is, that the public assist
against themselves, which is not the less true than paradoxical. It is
contrary to the generally-received opinion that stocks should either
be greatly elevated or depressed, without some apparent cause: it is
contrary to natural inference that they should rise,--not from the
public sending in to purchase, or to buy or sell, which however
frequently happens. It follows, therefore, that the former is occasioned
by the arts of the interested stock-jobbers, and the latter by out-door
speculators, who have the market price _banged down_ upon them by those
whose business and interest it is to fleece them all they can. In the
language of the Stock Exchange, you must be either a _bull or a bear,_
a _buyer or a seller_: now as it is not necessary you should have one
shilling of property in the funds to embark in this speculation, but
may just as well sell a hundred thousand pounds of stock as one pound,
according to the practice of time bargains, which is wagering contrary
to law--so neither party can be compelled to complete their agreement,
or to pay whatever the difference of the amount may be upon the stock
when the account closes: all transactions

15 The mode of exchanging stock in France is in public. A
broker stan