The English Spy, page 439 by Bernard Blackmantle
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e changes stock, gains the advantage; for instance, if he buys consols at sixty, when he sells out there will be deducted one and a half per cent. for the dividend.
8 When bargains are done privately by a whisper, to conceal the party's being a bull.
9 Buying or selling for ready money.
10 Pony, 25,000L.
11 Giving greater turns to the jobbers than those regulated in the market.
12 Call. Buying to call more at one-eighth or one-fourth above the price on a certain day, if the buyer chooses, and the price is in his favour.
13 Put. Selling to put more to it on a certain day, at one-eighth or one-fourth under the market price.
~120~~attacks of this sort, we reached the upper end of the court, and found ourselves upon the steps which lead to the regions of Upper Tartary, (i.e.) the Stock Exchange. At this moment our friend Principal was summoned by his clerk to attend some antique spinster, who, having scraped together another hundred, had hobbled down to annex it to her previous amount of consols. "You must not attempt to enter the room by yourselves," said Principal; "but accompany me back to the Royal Exchange, where you can walk and wait until I have completed the old lady's job." While Principal was gone to invest his customer's stock, we amused ourselves with observing the strange variety of character which every where presents itself among the groups of all nations who congregate together in this arena of commerce. Perhaps a more fortunate moment for such a purpose could not have occurred: the speculative transactions of the times had drawn forth a certain portion of the Stock Exchange, gamblers, or inhabitants of Upper Tartary, who, like experienced sharpers of another description, never suffer a good thing to escape them. Capel Court was partially abandoned for exchange bubbles,{14} and new companies opened a new system of fraudulent enrichment for these sharks of the money