turn, so do the shares of a company rise, in
proportion to the anxiety to see them rise. The
more they rise, the more they are bought up to
profit by the difference; and the more they are
bought up, the higher they mount, in accordance
with the axiom of political economy that value
is in direct proportion to demand. A rise,
therefore, in the stock-jobbing world is the
cause of further rise, and causes it artificially
irrespective of the value of the thing offered for
sale. As long as the ascensional period lasts,
all goes right for everybody, alternately
purchaser and seller. I buy a bit of paper for ten
francs, and I sell it for twenty to a third
purchaser, who re-sells it for thirty to a fourth; and
so on, ad infinitum. Up to that point, every
one of us has realised a profit without being a
halfpenny out of pocket. If the rise could
continue to all eternity, man would have
discovered the philosopher's stone. He would
be able to produce wealth at will, without
betaking himself to any sort of labour.
Unfortunately, there arrives a time when the ever-
ascending advance attains a figure so utterly
disproportioned to real value, that nobody can
expect any further advance. But, as the last
holder of the share would then be obliged to
discharge the whole series of premiums
previously pocketed by the whole series of gamblers,
he endeavours as quickly as possible to pass
on to other hands this dangerous share which is
laden with so heavy a mortgage.

The share, being more eagerly offered than
sought for, goes down for the very same reason
that it went up. For, as has been stated, in
political economy value is always equivalent to
demand. Stock-jobbing is like the children's
game in which the last spark of a dying brand is
rapidly passed on from hand to hand. " The
little goodman is still alive!" And it goes, and
travels on, and returns, and goes on again, without
cessation, as long as the spark is visible.
"The little goodman is still alive!" But the
moment it is extinguished in the hand of a
child, that child has to pay a forfeit to all the
other children.

The downfall is terrible. The advance was
certain and regular; for, to the calculation
of profits, people bring a certain amount of
reflection. But, when an enterprise founded on
stock-jobbing begins to sink, there is no possible
transition or halting-place. Every one is afraid
of seeing his house fall in over his head. This
is the reason why every stock-jobbing epoch
has been followed by a terrible financial crisis.
How should it be otherwise? Stock-jobbing,
which is only gaming on a large scale,
creates no new wealth, any more than any
other game. It only causes wealth already
created, to change its owners. One man is
obliged to pay what another man gains, and
frequently without being provided with the
means of payment, and expecting to be paid
instead of paying. He cannot help becoming
bankrupt. But bankruptcy, like misfortune,
never comes alone. One ruined fortune always
drags down other fortunes. The financial
disaster, reverberated from echo to echo, at last
shakes the whole framework of society.

Nor is this all. By offering to the capitalist,
from day to day, a sort of improvised profit
immensely superior to the ordinary profits of
money out at interest anywhere else, stock-
jobbing decoys into its den the available capital
of the nation, and withdraws it from useful and
productive undertakings, whether industrial or
agricultural. It thus diminishes reproductive
labour, and thereby diminishes the national
wealth to exactly the same amount.
Consequently, history testifies that every stock-
jobbing epidemic has always impoverished the
people and sterilised labour for a longtime
afterwards.

Never mind; the game is begun. It is opened
by great speculators, to pillage little gamblers.
Although the dupes have seen the swindlers a
dozen times at work, they will bet against them
again, all the same. They will go to that terrible
Quincampoix-street and dabble in shares there
from morning till night; they will roll in the
gutter if they can only catch some little
bespattering of wealth. The princess who used
to throw a handful of gold coin out of her palace
window, in order to see the crowd grovelling for
it in the mud, was the first to enjoy the
spectacle of bubble companies and their
consequences.

Extravagance excites to gambling, and
gambling in turn excites to immorality. The
Bourse, in fact, tears man away from his
providential destiny, from the austere life of labour,
which alone can teach him the value of every
moment, and the virtue of every drop of sweat.
It fires, moreover, in the heart of the gambler a
furious appetite for wealth: not for wealth
laboriously and honourably acquired, but for
wealth suddenly snatched as with the stroke of
a wand. To appease this thirst for gold at any
price, the father of a family will intrepidly brave
all considerations of honour and prudence; he
will unhesitatingly and shamelessly throw on
the gambling-table his wife's dowry, his last
scrap of patrimony, his child's last morsel of
bread. Does he lose? He will live as he
can. He will walk the streets and turn
chevalier d'industrie. His wife and daughter
must do as he does. Does he win? He will
sacrifice what he has won, to pleasure; for one
vice always enrols another vice in its train,
through the effect of natural sympathy. What
matters it how much money is thus squandered
in ostentation or debauchery? More is to be
had whenever he wants it. According to his
notions, gambling is a complaisant cashier
deputed to supply his expenses indefinitely.

Our Provincial Notary (for he is a Notary)
once had occasion to call on one of these sure and
certain stock-jobbers who practise the art of
winning millions by abridged methods. He was
formerly a sort of jack-of-all-trades who lived
from hand to mouth, the king of the moles knows
only how. He had tried painting, then, sculpure,
then travelling in foreign parts at the
government expense. At present, he inhabits a