It seems that the price of stocks, in Paris, is everybody's business except that of the real owners. The so-called buyers and sellers do nothing, in fact, but make bets with one another that such will be at such a time the state of the market. Each of them, in order to make a living, tries to direct the policies of the whole of Europe. Each invents, toward the end he desires. comments on, or misrepresents the facts, penetrates the councils and the cabinets of ministers, the secrets of courts; makes ambassadors speak; decides peace and war; stirs up and misleads opinion, always so avid of novelties and of errors, especially in France, that the more one misleads it the
more empire he has over it. And this scandalous influence is not alone exercised by that crowd of adventurers called stock-jobbers. The stock-brokers themselves, to whom all personal speculation is interdicted by the nature of their business, take advantage of their position and buy and sell on their own account. Often they become opposed in interest to those, even, whom they call their clients. Public morals alone would require the suppression of this abuse, and still other motives join with this. The rights of liberty end where abuses commence.
