Stocks, but got into them at a prodigiously low and despicable Price.

They had no sooner thus worm'd them out of the Trade, and got the
greatest part of the Effects in their own Hands, and consequently the
whole Management, but they run up the Price of the Funds again as
high as ever, and laught at the folly of those that sold out.

Nor could the other People make any Reflections upon the honesty of
the practice, for it was no Original, but had its birth among the
Solunarians themselves, of whom 3 or 4 had frequently made a Trade of
raising and lowring the Funds of the Societies by all the Clandestine
Contrivances in the World, and had ruin'd abundance of Families to
raise their own Fortunes and Estates.

One of the greatest Merchants in the Moon rais'd himself by this
Method to such a heighth of Wealth, that he left all his Children
married to Grandees, Dukes, and Great Folks; and from a Mechanick
Original, they are now rankt among the Lunarian Nobility, while
multitudes of ruin'd Families helpt to build his Fortune, by sinking
under the Knavery of his Contrivance.

His Brother in the same Iniquity, being at this time a Man of the
Feather, has carry'd on the same intrieguing Trade with all the Face
and Front imaginable; it has been nothing with him to persuade his
most intimate Friends to Sell, or Buy, just as he had occasion for
his own Interest to have it rise, or fall, and so to make his own
Market of their Misfortune. Thus he has twice rais'd his Fortunes,
for the House of Feathers demolisht him once, and yet he has by the
same clandestine Management work'd himself up again.