did a good deal of dirty business between them. Now, the City columns of
the great daily papers have for a very long time been free from any
taint of this kind, and on the whole it may be said that finance is a
very much cleaner affair than either law or politics. It is true that
swindles still happen in the City, but their number is trivial compared
with the volume of the public's money that is handled and invested. It
is only in the by-ways of finance and in the gutters of City journalism
that the traps are laid for the greedy and gullible public, and if the
public walks in, it has itself to blame. A genuine investor who wants
security and a safe return on his money can always get it. Unfortunately
the investor is almost always at the same time a speculator, and is apt
to forget the distinction; and those who ask for a high rate of
interest, absolute safety and a big rise in the prices of securities
that they buy are only inviting disaster by the greed that wants the
unattainable and the gullibility that deludes them into thinking they
can have it.

To return to our Ruritanian loan, which we left being underwritten. The
prospectus duly comes out and is advertised in the papers and sown
broadcast over the country through the post. It offers £1,500,000 (part
of £3,000,000 of which half is reserved for issue in Paris), 4-1/2 per
cent. bonds of the Kingdom of Ruritania, with interest payable on April
1st and October 1st, redeemable by a cumulative Sinking Fund of 1 per
cent., operating by annual drawings at par, the price of issue being 97,
payable as to 5 per cent. on application, 15 per cent. on allotment and
the balance in instalments extending over four months. Coupons and drawn
bonds are payable in sterling at the countinghouse of the issuing firm.
The extent of the other information given varies considerably. Some
firms rely so far on their own prestige and the credit of those on whose
account they offer loans, that they state little more than the bare