We will now suppose a familiar case of a speculator following in the path of so many wise persons who have gone before to their ruin in the process of applying some nostrum, which was to make their fortune in a week. The fortnightly settlements on the Stock Exchange take place about the middle and end of each month. We will suppose a young speculator, full of ideas upon such subjects, and having just sufficient knowledge of the different stocks to make believe that he knows a great deal, gets introduced to a broker, who on ascertaining that he has two or three hundred pounds available, intimates his willingness to execute his orders. The speculator buys £5,000 Turkish 5 per cents of 1865, £5,000 Spanish 3 per cents and £5,000 Egyptian 7 per cents of 1868, being told that these are easy markets to deal in. We will assume these bargains are done in the middle of an account. On the day of the purchases the several stocks rise ¼ to ½ per cent., and he goes home a happy man with his contracts in his pocket, reckoning the gain he has already made, and sleeps like a top. He rises with a light heart next morning to devour his money article and breakfast simultaneously, eagerly searching in the list for his friends the Turkish, Spanish and Egyptian Stocks. The rise reported to him by his broker the evening before is confirmed in his newspaper, and he is in the act of laying it down when his eye catches a telegram, headed “Defeat and resignation of the French Government.” His little experience has already taught him that the leading foreign stocks are largely dealt in on the Continent, and here comes a sinking of the heart number one. The breakfast is left unfinished, and he hurries to the city to find the Stock Markets open very flat all around on selling orders from Paris. The ¼ to ½ per cent. profit had disappeared, and an additional 1 per cent. into the bargain; so that instead of standing to gain £30 or £40, he stands to lose £150. A conference with the broker is somewhat encouraging, as he laughs over the matter, and assures his client that “they are bound to rally.” Another day passes and there is no rally. Several days go by, and disorders in the streets are reported from Paris, causing further sales in the London market, and our friend sees a loss of £300 on his three purchases.[40] The “carrying over” day arrives without any recovery having taken place, but the broker is still cheerful, being himself a man of some means, although suffering from the prevalent disease of a great weakness for commissions, which has often caused him heavy losses through negligence in ascertaining the means of his clients. “It is only a question of seeing it out, sir,” he says, an observation which disperses with a lightning flash the ignorance under which our friend had hitherto labored with regard to the necessity of available capital, or in still plainer terms, ready cash. He goes away to turn this awkward dilemma in which he finds himself, over in his mind. Seeing it out, is, of course, waiting for a recovery. In the meantime he must pay his differences, which amount to £50 more than he possesses.

This one case in point tells the whole tale, and it is therefore superfluous to take up time and space with other instances. If legitimate trading business, in which the risk of loss is so reduced as to enable a man to earn a living at it, cannot be carried on without adequate capital, how is it possible that pure speculation can be successfully practised in which the conditions are reversed, and at which experience shows that no one can succeed except the professional expert, and only then in some cases under circumstances to which we have before referred?