In 1825
the country undertook immediate engagements, to fulfil which a century's
income would not have sufficed: today a thousand railway companies are
registered, requiring a capital of six hundred million and another
thousand projected, to cost another five hundred million. Where is the
money to come from? If the world was both cultivated and civilised
(instead of neither), and this nation could be sold, with every building,
ship, quadruped, jewel, and marketable female in it, it would not fetch
the money to make these railways; yet the country undertakes to create
them in three years _with its floating capital._ Arithmetic of Bedlam!
The thing cannot last a year without collapsing." Richard Hardie _talked_
like this from first to last. But, when he saw that shares invariably
mounted; that even those who, for want of interest, had to buy them at a
premium, sold them at a profit; when he saw paupers making large fortunes
in a few months, by buying into every venture and selling the next
week--he itched for his share of the booty, and determined to profit in
act by the credulity of mankind, as well as expose it in words.
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