n to the money-lender to resort to the Stock
Exchange. "Instances have occurred," says our authority, "when in the
morning everybody has been anxious to lend money at 4 per cent., when
about two o'clock money has become so scarce that it could with
difficulty be borrowed at 10 per cent. If the price of Consols be low,
persons who are desirous of raising money will give a high rate of
interest rather than sell stock."

The famous Pop-gun Plot was generally supposed to have been a Stock
Exchange trick. A writer on stockbroking says: "The Pop-gun Plot, in
Palace Yard, on a memorable occasion of the King going to the Parliament
House, was never understood or traced home. It is said to have
originated in a Stock Exchange hoax. 'Popgun John' was at the time a low
republican in the Stock Exchange, and had a house in or near Palace
Yard, from which a missile had been projected. He subsequently grew
rich."

[Illustration: THE PRESENT STOCK EXCHANGE.]

The journals of that day described the hot pursuit by the myrmidons
being cooled by a well-got-up story that the fugitive suspected had been
unfortunately drowned; and in proof, a hat picked up by a waterman at
the Nore was brought wet to the police office, and proved to have
belonged to the person pursued. The plotter disappeared after this
"drowning" for some months, while the hush-money and sinister manoeuvres
were baffling the pursuers. Afterwards, the affair dying away, he
reappeared, resuscitated, in the Stock Exchange, making very little
secret of this extraordinary affair, and would relate it in ordinary
conversation on the Stock Exchange benches, as a philosophical
experiment, not intended to endanger the king's life, but certainly
planned to frighten the public, so as to effect a fall, and realise a
profitable bear account; if sufficient to trip up the contractors, the
better.

While the dupes of the Cato Street conspiracy were dangling before the
"debtor's door," the surviving adept of the former plot, from his villa
not ten miles from London, was mounting his carriage to drive to the
Stock Exchange, to operate upon the effect this example might produce in
the public mind, and, consequently, realising his now large portion of
funded property.

"If there are any members now of that standing in the Stock Exchange,
they must remember how artlessly the tale of this philosophical
experiment used to be told by the contriver of it in a year or two
afterwards, in reliance