Bursa

“ Footnote: "Exhibitions."—This is the technical name in many cases, corresponding to the bursæ or bursaries of the continent; from which word bursæ is derived, I believe, the German term Bursch,—that is, a bursarius, or student, who lives at college upon the salary allowed by such a bursary. Some years ago the editor of a Glasgow daily paper called upon Oxford and Cambridge, with a patronizing flourish, to imitate some one or more of the Scottish universities in founding such systems of aliment for poor students otherwise excluded from academic advantages. ”

“ But instead of withholding the drawback, which might have been done, with ease, without charge, without possibility of smuggling, and instead of applying the money (money already in your hands) according to your pleasure, you began your operations in finance by flinging away your revenue; you allowed the whole drawback on export, and then you charged the duty, (which you had before discharged,) payable in the colonies, where it was certain the collection would devour it to the bone,—if any revenue were ever suffered to be collected at all. One spirit pervades and animates the whole mass. ”

“ At present the state of their treasury sinks every day more and more in cash, and swells more and more in fictitious representation. When so little within or without is now found but paper, the representative not of opulence, but of want, the creature not of credit, but of power, they imagine that our flourishing state in England is owing to that bank-paper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishing condition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and to the total exclusion of all idea of power from any part of the transaction. ”

“ Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The Minister of Finance reiterated his call for supply with, a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent, creating a new paper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands. They issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands made upon them by the bank of discount, the great machine or paper-mill of their fictitious wealth. ”

“ My metal and ornaments were also renewed in the style of a Zodangan gentleman, attached to the house of Ptor, which was the family name of my benefactors.
They filled a little sack at my side with Zodangan money. The medium of exchange upon Mars is not dissimilar from our own except that the coins are oval. Paper money is issued by individuals as they require it and redeemed twice yearly. If a man issues more than he can redeem, the government pays his creditors in full and the debtor works out the amount upon the farms or in mines, which are all owned by the government. ”

“ In payment of a debt of twenty shillings a creditor may refuse all the paper of the Bank of England. Nor is there amongst us a single public security, of any quality or nature whatsoever, that is enforced by authority. In fact, it might be easily shown that our paper wealth, instead of lessening the real coin, has a tendency to increase it,—instead of being a substitute for money, it only facilitates its entry, its exit, and its circulation,—that it is the symbol of prosperity, and not the badge of distress. ”

“ The temple of the Bourse—where the faithful Catholics and the fervent Jews hold their meetings for the rites and things of petty commerce—the temple of the Bourse must, in fact, disappear, and soon.
The money-handlers will in their turn be handled by the heavy caress of the crumbling stones.
Then the game of the Bourse will no longer be played; those skillful strokes that bring millions to corporations—whose reason for being is to speculate on wheat and to organize famines—will be no more. ”

“ The plan of May reinstates them in their old relation: but in return, their revenues in Bengal are charged with an interest of eight per cent on the sum subscribed, until bills shall be drawn; they are made proprietors of cargoes purchased, under the disadvantage of that interest, at their own hazard; they are subjected to all losses; and they are involved in Europe for payments of bills to the amount of eighty lacs of rupees, at two shillings the rupee,—that is, in bills for eight hundred thousand pounds sterling. ”

“ The banker then convokes the traders: ‘My friends, let us go to work: write a prospectus! Down with humbug!’ On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and clamor,—‘One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!’ In short, all the clap-trap of commerce. We buy up men of arts and sciences; the show begins, the public enters; it gets its money’s worth, and we get the profits. The pig is penned up with his potatoes, and the rest of us wallow in banknotes. ”

“ The meal was served by a slave in a white tunic of very cheap material, who was much sur­prised when payment for the meal and the service was offered in gold.
"It is seldom," he said, "that warriors rich enough to possess gold come to our poor shop. Pieces of iron and bits of lead, with much wooden money, pass into my coffers; but rarely do I see gold. Once I did, and many of my customers were formerly of the richest of the city. Yonder see that tall man with the heavily wrinkled face. Once he was rich—the richest warrior in his dome. ”

“ A paper circulation, not founded on any real money deposited or engaged for, amounting already to four-and-forty millions of English money, and this currency by force substituted in the place of the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby the substance of its revenue, as well as the medium of all its commercial and civil intercourse, must put the whole of what power, authority, and influence is left, in any form whatsoever it may assume, into the hands of the managers and conductors of this circulation. ”

“ No other traders are permitted to go into the country west of Lake Superior. I will build trading forts {19} there. From these as a base I will continue my search for the Western Sea. All the profits of the enterprise, the rich furs that are brought into my posts, shall be yours.' Here was something that the self-seeking merchants could understand. They saw in the fur-trading monopoly a chance of a golden harvest, a return of hundreds for every franc that they advanced towards the expenses of the undertaking. With cheerful haste, therefore, they agreed to pay the cost of the expedition. ”

“ The arrangements of the table being finished the dervise began to eat; but ever and anon his eye wandered to the gold and the various utensils, and he said in his heart: “Gracious heaven! what a wealthy man Burzakh the merchant must have been, who possessed in his house treasures and stores to such an extent that it seems almost the wealth of a crowned head!” He at the same time considered in his heart, “This very night we must come into the house of Burzakh’s daughter and seize this treasure and furniture—we must have recourse to theft.” ”

“ The Emir Beshir pays to the Pasha of Tripoli, for the Miri of the mountain, one hundred and thirty purses, and collects for himself upwards of six hundred purses. The duties levied upon the peasants in this district are generally calculated by the number of Rotolas of silk which the peasant is estimated to get yearly from his worms; the taxes on the mulberry trees are calculated in proportion to those on the silk. The peasant who rears silk-worms is reckoned to pay about twenty or twenty-five per cent. ”

“ Irving himself supposes, beyond his calculation, without reckoning what the public creditors themselves pay to themselves, and without taking one shilling from the stock of the landed interest, our colonies, our Oriental possessions, our skill and industry, our commerce and navigation, at the commencement of this year, were pouring a new annual capital into the kingdom, hardly half a million short of the whole interest of that tremendous debt from which we are taught to shrink in dismay, as from an overwhelming and intolerable oppression. ”

“ As he said himself, and as many men found out rather to their surprise, there were two Burkes, both very much at your service. “Reggie Burke,” between four and ten, ready for anything from a hot-weather gymkhana to a riding-picnic; and, between ten and four, “Mr. Reginald Burke, Manager of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank.” You might play polo with him one afternoon and hear him express his opinions when a man crossed; and you might call on him next morning to raise a two-thousand rupee loan on a five hundred pound insurance-policy, eighty pounds paid in premiums. ”

“ It is doubtful whether the President was correct in saying, as he did in his message of 1829, that a large portion of the people questioned the constitutionality and expediency of the law creating the Bank, and it is certain that the Bank was not considered by all to have failed in the establishment of a sound and uniform currency. ”

“ If ever there was a subordinate dominion pleasantly circumstanced to the superior power, it was this. A large rent or tribute, to the amount of two hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year, was paid in monthly instalments with the punctuality of a dividend at the Bank. If ever there was a prince who could not have an interest in disturbances, it was its sovereign, the Rajah Cheit Sing. He was in possession of the capital of his religion, and a willing revenue was paid by the devout people who resorted to him from all parts. ”

“ This seems to ordinary intelligence to prove that the Bank was accommodating Western borrowers with Eastern money; and as the Bank was limited by its charter to a maximum of six per centum interest on its loans, it seems that the accommodation was being rendered upon quite moderate consideration. But the President said it proved that the "Eastern money power" was oppressing the West, and the West was quite willing to believe anything against the persons or institutions to whom or to which it owed money. ”

“ A separate government, they said, was to be set up by Burr in the Western States; the public lands were to be taken over and divided among Burr's followers; bounties, in the form of broad acres, were to be offered as inducements for young men to leave the Atlantic section of the country for the land of promise toward the sunset; Burr's new government was to repudiate its share of the public debt; with the aid of British ships and gold Burr was to conquer Mexico and establish a vast empire by uniting that imperial domain to the revolutionized Western and Southern States. ”

“ In England we feel the influence of the Bank, though it is only the centre of a voluntary dealing. He knows little, indeed, of the influence of money upon mankind, who does not see the force of the management of a moneyed concern which is so much more extensive, and in its nature so much more depending on the managers, than any of ours. ”

“ Investments.A certain portion of the revenues of Bengal has been for many years set apart to be employed in the purchase of goods for exportation to England, and this is called the Investment. The greatness of this investment has been the standard by which the merit of the Company's principal servants has been too generally estimated; and this main cause of the impoverishment of India has been generally taken as a measure of its wealth and prosperity. ”

“ The towns, on the other hand, throughout the West must from very early times have treated production, which with them depended on industry and commerce, as exceedingly variable; but even in the most flourishing times of the Hanseatic League, they never got beyond a simple commercial balance-sheet. Fleets, armies, political power and influence fall under the debit and credit of a trader's ledger. ”

“ After leaving Thuria we returned to Sari, where the seat of government is located. Here, upon a vast, fertile plateau, overlooking the great gulf that runs into the continent from the Lural Az, we are building the great city of Sari. Here we are erecting mills and factories. Here we are teaching men and women the rudiments of agriculture. Here Perry has built the first printing-press, and a dozen young Sarians are teaching their fellows to read and write the language of Pellucidar. ”

“ Even his credit was not bettered by bills at long periods; he does not pretend that he raised any money upon them; nor is it conceivable that a banker at Benares would be more willing to honor the drafts of so miserable, undone, and dependent a person as the Nabob of Oude than those of the Governor-General of Bengal, which might be paid either on the receipt of the Benares revenue, or at the seat of his power, and of the Company's exchequer. ”

“ This faculty had not, any more than that of the law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors, therefore, must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager, at any expense, to change their ideal paper wealth for the more solid substance of land. ”

“ The President called the Bank a monopoly, which means privilege conferred by Government on a few at the expense of the many. He calculated that the privilege to be granted to the existing stockholders by the re-charter of the Bank was worth seventeen millions of dollars, while the bonus which they would be required to pay was but three millions. Fourteen millions of dollars would thus be presented by the Government to the Bank, which sum the Government must take by taxation from the people. ”

“ The President, however, returned to the attack in his message of December 10th, 1830. He also presented, in this message, an elaboration of his idea of a Government bank. His proposition was for a bank as a branch of the Treasury Department, based on the deposits of the funds of the Government and also on those made by individuals, but having no power to issue notes or make loans or purchase property. Its chief purpose would be to do the business of the Government, and its expenses might be met by selling exchange to private persons at a small rate. ”