Friday, February 16, 2024

Daniel Defoe on Fake News and Markets: "The anatomy of Exchange-Alley: or, a system of stock-jobbing"

Along with the publication of Robinson Crusoe in April 1719 and A Journal of the Plague Year in March 1722 Daniel Defoe published this piece, 1719:

Here is the version at Oxford's Text Archive, keeping in mind that this was a year before the South Sea Bubble, in which Defoe also played a part:

THE ANATOMY OF Exchange-Alley: OR, A System of STOCK-JOBBING.
Proving that Scandalous Trade, as it is now carry'd on, 
to be Knavish in its Private Practice, and Treason in its Publick:

Being a clear Detection

  • I. Of the Private Cheats used to Deceive one another.
  • II. Of their Arts to draw Innocent Families into their Snares, understood by their New Term of Art (viz.) (being let into the Secret.)
  • III. Of their Raising and Spreading False News to Ground the Rise or Fall of Stocks upon.
  • IV. Of their Joyning with Traytors in Raising and Pro­pagating Treasonable Rumours to Terrify and Discou­rage the People with Apprehensions of the Enemies to the Government.
  • V. Of their Improving those Rumours, to make a Run upon the Bank, and Ruin publick Credit.
  • VI. Of the dangerous Consequences of their Practices to the Government, and the Necessity there is to Re­gulate or Suppress them.

To which is added, Some Characters of the most Eminent Persons concern'd now, and for some Years past, in Carrying on this Pernicious Trade.

By a JOBBER.

The Second Edition Corrected.

LONDON: Printed for E. Smith near Exchange-Alley. 1719. Price One Shilling.

 THE ANATOMY OF Exchange-Alley, &c.

THE General Cry against Stock-Jobbing has been such, and People have been so long, and so justly Complaining of it as a publick Nusance; and which is still worse, have complained so long without a Remedy, that the Jobbers, harden'd in Crime, are at last come to exceed all [Page 2] bounds, and now, if ever, sleeping Justice will awake, and take some Notice of them, and if it should not now, yet the diligem Creatures are so steddy to themselves, that they will some time or other, make it absolute­ly necessary to the Government to demolish them.....

....MUCH MORE

In 2001 a first edition went under the hammer at Christies and realized GBP 3,290:

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-3840903  

A broker looking to brush up on his tips and tricks I imagine.

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