The mania rose to the wildest pitch during the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the example set by Government was followed, to an unmeasured extent, by all classes of the population. In 1772, there were lottery tailors, lottery hatters, lottery staymakers, lottery teamerchants, lottery barbers-offering a shave and the expectation of winning £10 in exchange for a threepenny ticket-lottery shoeblacks, lottery eating-houses-where a fellow had a chance of getting a meal and fifty pounds for sixpencelottery oyster stalls, with a dozen live "natives," and a remote prospect of five guineas-and a hundred similar institutions. The lottery-men, careless of the frightful ruin they were spreading through the length and breadth of the land, were quite unscrupulous as regards the means. employed in fostering their nefarious schemes. Clergymen were enlisted to advocate gambling as a patriotic duty; the Bible was ransacked to prove the antiquity and sanctity of lotteries; and influential merchants and bankers were induced to put their names to lottery schemes of the greatest effrontery. The willingness of not a few heads of banking establishments to engage in these speculations is shown by the fact that, in 1751, no less than 30,000 lottery

tickets were accepted in pawn by the metropolitan bankers. For a time "chances" became an established security in Lombard Street, side by side with bills of exchange and Bank of England notes. The Bank authorities themselves were mixed up, more or less, with the lottery system, while under the patronage of Mr. Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The proposed epitaph over his tomb forms an epitomised history of the period:-" Here lies the Right Honourable Nicholas Vansittart, once Chancellor of the Exchequer, who patronised Bible Societies, built churches, encouraged savings banks, and supported lotteries."

XV. THE BATTLE OF JOINT-STOCK.

THE great political and financial crisis of 1793 showed in glaring light the mischievous effects of the legislation of that day, which, by preventing the establishment of joint-stock banks, encouraged the growth of a numerous class of small tradesmen in the country passing by the name of bankers but undeserving the title. One of the causes, and by no means the least important, of the crisis was to be found in the reckless operations of many of these local banks, particularly their unchecked issue of notes. There were at this period about three hundred country bankers who manufactured paper money, some of them very liberally ; and more than two hundred of them issued what were termed "optional notes," payable either in the metropolis or in the country. These little bits of paper, often mere rags, and in nearly all instances but pictorial representations of funds which did not exist, came floating up

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to London in great quantities, very unwelcome in the shops, yet taken on the credit of the bearers. Much intrigue was resorted to on the part of the country bankers to push their paper into the great circle of trade; the member for the borough seldom came up to St. Stephen's without having his pocket-book stuffed with the notes of some unknown firm of grocers or haberdashers, and his wife invariably made it a point to settle metropolitan millinery and dressmakers' bills in paper money of native growth. Of course, when the crisis came, the "optional notes" were found to be little better than waste paper, and a cry of distress went through the land when a couple of hundred country bankers all at once suspended payment.

The shock was so violent as to upset the great protecting bank together with the little protected ones. On the 8th of October, 1795, the directors of the Bank of England sent a first message to the Chancellor of the Exchequer claiming assistance in their need. No notice. was taken of this communication, nor of subsequent appeals, which came more and more pressing in the spring and summer of 1796. Finally, on the 9th of February, 1797, the Court of Directors ordered the Governor of the Bank

to tell Mr. Pitt that the long-threatening ruin was fast approaching. This last cry for help took effect. On the 26th February, a meeting of the Privy Council was held, in which it was resolved "that the Directors of the Bank should forbear issuing any cash." This order was followed by a notice of the Directors, stating that they were restrained from doing what, in fact, was absolutely impossible for them to do, namely, to give cash for their paper. They added, nevertheless, that "the general concerns. of the bank were in the most affluent condition." The statement was received for what it was worth; and the general impression upon the public caused by the bankruptcy of the great Government establishment was shown in an unprecedented fall in public funds as well as in the stock of the Bank of England. A few figures on this subject may serve to illustrate this state of things. The price of the funds was as follows in the month of March, 1792:—