Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

medium of false entries and fictitious claims; he became the proprietor of two theatres, and lived an intensely gay life during the hours that remained to him before ten o'clock in the morning, and after four o'clock in the afternoon; his office banking pass-book and his fire and life loss-book presented a mass of erasures and alterations, but still he met with no check or hindrance from the auditing men of straw. Nor was it through their periodical vigilance that his frauds were, at last, discovered, and that he was driven, through a verdict of ten years' transportation, to hang himself in his cell.

actitude and fraudulent success; his life was one of mingled luxury and philanthropy; and when he was arrested, to be afterwards transported for life, he had obtained from the sale of his forged shares, about two hundred and forty thousand pounds. His trial took place on the 15th of January, 1857, hardly five months after the following auditorial certificate of the company's business regularity, had been issued to the confiding shareholders:

"Accountant's Department, Aug. 7, 1856. "To the Chairman and Directors of the Great Northern Railway Company. "Gentlemen,-The accounts and books in every The fate of Walter Watts, in 1850, was power-department continue to be so satisfactorily kept, that less, so it seems, to deter others from following we have simply to express our entire approval of in his footsteps, and. benefiting by the disco-them, and to present them to you for the information veries which his keenness and industry had made. of the shareholders, with our usual certificate of corThe loss of seventy thousand pounds sterling rectness. by the Globe Insurance Company was also powerless, so it seems, to improve the character of auditors, and elevate them into something less practically worthless than men of straw.

The next fraudulent servant who "helped himself" to any great extent, was William James Robson, the forger of Crystal Palace shares. His operations began in 1853-within three years of the death of Walter Watts-and ended in 1856. His private life was very similar to that of the master he copied, although he only succeeded in appropriating about thirty thousand pounds. This was done by taking advantage of his position in the transfer office of the Crystal Palace Company, to create shares and sell them in the market: relying upon the apathy of the purchasers-a class from whom auditors are drawn. His calculations-or rather Walter Watts's calculations-were perfectly sound, and for two years and more these strips of paper were frequently bought and sold, without any purchaser having the prudence to walk from the Stock Exchange to the transfer office on the City side of London-bridge, where he might easily have discovered the fraud. The amount that Robson secured was small compared with Watts's abstractions, but it was large when allowance is made for the inferior materials with which he had to work. If his lot had fallen upon happier ground-upon the banking balances of rich and thriving corporations he might have eclipsed his predecessor in the loftiness and daring of his flight. As it was, he might have said, in imitation of Jean Paul Richter, "I have made the most of the stuff that was given me: no man can do more." He was transported for twenty years.

"We have the honour, &c.,
(Signed)

"JOHN CHAPMAN,}

"J. CATTLEY,

Auditors."

At this period, Leopold Redpath must have received the bulk of his enormous prize.

The notoriety of this case, the extent of fraud it disclosed, and the complete verification it presented of Walter Watts's secret analysis of auditors, were generally considered sufficient to check all further development of this class of crime. The world was disposed to look upon Leopold Redpath as one who had reached the top of the criminal tree; as the most eminent among all modern men of this kind who had "helped themselves." It was widely understood that all joint-stock enterprises had undergone a searching examination and cleaning out; that insurance offices, railways, and especially banks, were secured, for ever, from any fraudulent worms in the bud, and were now to be happy in having auditors who were something more than men of straw. Failures might come (as come they did), and the country might pass through the financial agony of a commercial crisis (as it did at the close of 1857), but it was felt that forging servants of joint-stock companies had had their day, and that, after all, the wisdom taught us by their dishonesty was not so dearly bought.

How little this sense of security was based upon actual knowledge, has been shown, within a few weeks, by William George Pullinger, the last and greatest follower of Walter Watts. This late chief cashier of the Union Bank of London pleaded guilty to a charge of having stolen two hundred and sixty-three thousand and Some time before William James Robson rose seventy pounds eight shillings and tenpence, by and fell, and very shortly after the death of means of a false pass-book, and tampering with Walter Watts, a greater man than either in this a Bank of England account. He entered the peculiar aristocracy of fraud, must have been bank, as an ordinary clerk, in 1839, and he already laying his plans. Leopold Redpath, a became chief cashier about 1855. Five years clerk in the share office of the Great Northern after Walter Watts committed suicide, one year Railway, had also learnt the empty character of before Robson was discovered and transported, auditors, and the hollowness of so-called busi-two years before a similar punishment was ness checks. In 1851 or 1852 he must have awarded to Redpath, this fraudulent bank serbegun to issue forged shares. From that period vant must have begun to abstract the bank until 1856, his career was one of clerkly ex-l funds. On the very day when the trial of the

VENICE UNVISITED.

I.

THE lovely City married to the Ocean
Disturbs me with her image from afar;
A troublous motion

latter criminal was taking place, and possibly on the original paid-up capital of one million sterthe day after, when his own auditors may have ling, are always to be bought in the open been rubbing their hands and congratulating market at a certain varying premium. If the themselves upon the anti-fraudulent armour of future Pullinger can help himself to a certain the Union Bank, this William George Pullinger proportion of the available resources of the may have been speculating on the turf, or the bank (about a fifth will generally suffice)—and Stock Exchange, and keeping money back from there is nothing in the past or present system his employers' store at the Bank of England, in of auditing to prevent him-it will be easily order to gamble like a capitalist, or a sporting seen that he can buy up all the shares of his lord. As evening came, and he locked his employers, until he stands the sole proprietor of desk, and put on his hat, and closed the the establishment, secure from any civil or door of the banking-house upon his humbler criminal prosecution. The bank will be his, fellow-clerks, he must have laughed when he the clerks will be his, the books and documents considered how they were settling down for will be his; and, as many people prefer dealing hours under the shaded lamps, to trace an ob- with a private banker, he may experience but a stinate error of a few pounds or a few shillings very slight "run" upon his six or ten millions in the "general balance," while he was tripping of" deposits." off with a quarter of a million of money that was supposed to be safely lodged in the national bullion temple over the way. He had little fear that any discovery would be made before the allotted termination of five years; for Walter Watts's calculations-proved as they had been by Robson and Redpath-were to be trusted like the axioms of an exact science. He knew that certain inferior stealers of gold had substituted shot in its place; and that other ruder criminals had piled up stones and brickbats to conceal the loss of property. He had studied in a higher school, and he knew the value of figures. He relied upon a judicious combination of Arabic numerals, and his confidence was not misplaced. The appointed auditors-the Gog and Magog of the bank-were rather an assistance to him than otherwise. They looked so like a pair of terrible guardians of property, that people most contentedly accepted the show I for the reality. So William George Pullinger stood for years within their shadow, and "helped himself" freely to everything around him; and when he was discovered-as usual, not by auditorial sagacity-he had distanced Walter Watts by nearly two hundred thousand pounds, and the great Redpath by nearly thirty thousand.

Many believe (so most of us hear said) that the Pullinger frauds will end this forging series. We shall see. Commercial houses will be hurriedly put in order for a few weeks, and auditors will join hands and swear solemnly that such things shall never occur again. We shall see.

I

Of music drawn from other years
Dulls a long vision down to tears,

Made bright by distance and by height, which are
The birthright of a star.

II.

stand aloof like some sweet lover pining

By night without the lighted room where she
He loves is shining;

Who strains across a rushing wind
To watch her shadow on the blind,
And feel, while waiting at the trysting-tree,
The face he cannot see.

III.

see her now, this Chatterton of Cities!
The sea crawls up to kiss her from the South,
Crooning old ditties;

And standing far away I trace
The lie of beauty on her face,
And still the slothful sin and idle drowth
Seem sweet upon her mouth.

IV.

The seeds of Love are running wild around her,
Her pride has fallen since the wealthy waves
Arose and crowned her;

The spirit of the Past still roams
Her shrines and palaces and domes,
A spectral Future broods above, and braves
The glory of her graves.

V.

A joint-stock bank, as most persons are aware,
is a trading corporation started for money-lend-
ing and money-borrowing purposes, with a small
paid-up, and a large promised capital. This paid-
up capital may be a million of money, and a million
we will take it to be, for the sake of example.
In the course of a few years, if
be plen-
money
tiful, and the bank be reputed to be prosperous,
"customers' balances" remain, and "deposits"
flow in, until from six to ten millions of borrowed
capital is added to the paid-up capital. With
the whole of this sum the bank is at perfect The slothful sin fell on her, and she trembled
liberty to trade, reserving a certain portion by
way of "
balance"-in some cases a fifth, in
others an eighth-according to the rules of
business experience and the laws of banking.
In the mean time, the shares, which represent

She took her dowry from immortal nations—
The many winds brought wedding-gifts and loud
Congratulations;

The words of peace were on her lips,
Her seas were dark with coming ships,
And, as she gained the bridegroom crown'd and
proud,

The nations cried aloud.

VI.

O'er her own image in the violet deep,

With pride dissembled ;

She left her crowded streets and towers,
And deck'd her brow with idle flowers,
She dreamed away her fame, where waters keep
A music soft as sleep.

VII.

The function faded wholly with the duty,
But left the everlasting bane or grace
Which gave her beauty.

She saw with unaffrighted heart
The ships forsake her empty mart;
But God had found her in her dwelling-place
And cursed her with her face.

VIII.

But still the old immortal beauty lingers,

But the Celestials occasionally vary the monotony of their fire-rafts, with an ingenious little affair in a boat (a pretty idea), a large quantity of manure of an extremely volatile nature, under which they store a good deal of gunpowder; then, when they have added a badly-fed convict to scull down under the bows of an obtrusive ship, they fire the match and swim for it. One of these unasked-for bouquets exploded alongside a vessel commanded by an Honourable English

And still she weaves the flowers of other Springs captain, covering her decks and every one on them

With fairy fingers;

And still she holds her unreproved Communion with a time removed, Wafted from Heaven on the golden wings Of high imaginings.

IX.

Is it enough that she is lovely? lying
Unsinew'd till the populous sea recedes

And leaves her dying?

Or might she give, through pain and strife,
The Beautiful a deeper life,

Rising erect on sin and slothful creeds

To treble it with deeds?

X.

Peace to this Venice, though fulfilling never
The law that made her lovely; she must twine
Such flowers for ever!

Before our English woods are rolled
In blowing mists of autumn gold,

I trust to kneel before her still divine
And unforgotten, shrine.

CHINESE WAYS OF WARFARE.

SHARP work enough it was up at Canton, when the war first broke out, and there were only a few hundred English to hold their own against many thousand Chinamen, including the "Braves." These latter were represented as such terrible fellows that they were obliged to be kept chained up, for fear of their breaking loose and annihilating trembling humanity only being let out on special occasions, when excessive bravery and daring were required to achieve great ends.

Chinese warfare, however, consists generally in devising plans which require not the presence of man to execute, rather than in making bold sorties to sweep away" outer barbarians" from the face of the earth. The Chinese are partial to fire-junks -their enemies, in a true spirit of ignorance, are disrespectful enough to look upon in the light of fireworks; they are, moreover, punctual in their pyrotechnic displays, generally sending them down the current at about a quarter to four in the morning, conveniently waking up the officer of the middle watch in readiness to be relieved by the officer of the morning watch, who has something to enliven the even tenor of his way in watching them burn down and finally explode, after drifting into the middle of, and setting fire to, a number of native craft moored comfortably for the night. It is a fine sight, however, to see them glide majestically past with the tide the flames showing grandly through the rails of their high and picturesque sterns.

with specimens of an extremely aromatic nature, even to filling the chest of an officer which stood under a hatchway, and which chanced to be open at the time. They are fond, too, of enlivening the tedium of warfare with various facetious acts, as when the Dutch Folly Fort had been taken and a blue-jacket garrison put in, the hail of "All's well," made by the sentries when the bell was struck, used to be answered by the light-hearted little fellows in pigtails on the walls of Canton with a true and correct imitation. Nor are they averse to sending bad rockets over the heads of barbarians; but whether with the intention of striking terror and death to their hearts, is unknown, the effect being simply amusement.

But we, on our part, rather astonished them when the "man-of-war devil ships" (as they call our steamers) began to play up, one fine November morning, to the tune of red-hot shot and shell causing Celestial buildings to blaze in a manner that would have induced the uninitiated to believe them terrestrial, and converting high and mighty houses into castles in the air.

The Chinese nature is also a confiding one in warfare. This was seen when the French Folly Fort fell, when those unfortunate persons who were not engaged but had got into the line of fire on shore and had been hit, went on board our ships to beg the surgeons to dress their wounds.

For fear of coming into dangerous proximity with the fire-rafts before mentioned, several captured war-junks had been moored across the stream ahead of the English ships, and a guard of half a dozen marines with a corporal, had been put into one of them to keep a look out ahead. Now, it so happened that some pull-away boats (small sharp-built junks fitted with an innumerable number of oars, and two long guns) came down the reach, one evening, and, under cover of the darkness, began firing right and left on the unsuspecting English ships: which in their turn quickly proceeded to send grape and case after them, and also manned boats. The vessel which had the guard in the junk, sent one of hers to fetch them away, when they found that they were not there, and, though the boat pulled round to all the ships, nothing could be heard of the missing "joeys;" it was thereupon concluded that they had been carried off by the Chinamen. The fact turned out to be, however, that, seeing the firing going on, they thought they might as well do a little in that way themselves, and began discharging their muskets as hard as they could; one of our English boats perceiving this, and knowing nothing of there being marines

aboard, made instantly for the junk, and boarded her, cutlass in hand. They were astonished to find themselves confronted by half a dozen sturdy marines, whom they quickly put into their boat and proceeded in chase of the offenders. The astonishment of shipmates was great, when the sea soldiers" marched up over the gangway next day and fell in on the quarter deck, after having been given up for lost.

All this, besides the terrible amount of bloodsbed which has since taken place, was caused by the Chinese authorities hauling down the English ensign (which, by the way, had no business to be hoisted) on board a lorcha which had been recognised by some merchants as one which had robbed a vessel of theirs out at sea, a short time before. The persons on board were identified individually as being concerned in the aforesaid robbery, and there is little doubt that the lorcha was as great a pirate as any other vessel of that class. The class bears a very questionable name, and, in the opinion of some, does not number an honest trader in its lists. A lorcha will take in a cargo at Hong-Kong, and leave that place with old mat sails and painted black; when fairly at sea she will be painted yellow or blue (not uncommon colours), bend new canvas sails, and look out for a rich prize-perhaps a Fuchow junk laden with hams, bacon, and rice-and after committing many depredations, will repaint black, rebend the old sails, and go into the harbour to which she was bound with her original cargo. There, she will report that she has been attacked by, but has beaten off, a yellow lorcha with new sails, and if there be an English manof-war at hand, such man-of-war will probably go out in search of such lorcha. These lorchas, the majority of which are Portuguese, are peculiar craft; they have a half European hull, with a touch of Chinese: the bows low, and the stern rounded high up, in thorough opposition to our principles of ship-building. They have also Chinese masts and sails, though the latter are often made of canvas, the better to be managed by the Chinese seamen.

as the men were resuming their work after dinner, they heard a loud beating of gongs, and looking over the inner parapet, saw a large number of "Braves," who had been despatched to shoot them all, but who, on hearing them laughing and talking at their work, had required to have their courage plucked up by sound of gong. Our men soon dispersed their opponents, who took to the houses, and began firing out of the windows; so the order of the day was altered, and a mine made, which soon brought the old fort rattling about their ears.

The ship's getting the shot into her broadside when all the firing was ahead, was soon explained. The Chinese do not understand how to cast shot; the consequence is, that they are not perfectly spherical, and, when they strike the water, will ricochet at an angle to the direction in which they are fired-often a right angle. They are not very particular in their gunnery: not objecting to fire a gun with a shot that is too large, jammed in the muzzle: which in most cases bursts the gun and kills half a dozen of them; or they will put in a shot so small, that, on looking up the gun, you might see the charge of powder behind it.

ALL IN THE DOWNS.

DOWNSHIRE, in the map of England, stands in a quiet neighbourly unobtrusive way, next to Ramshire, with Hillshire and Hogshire north and south of it.

Like Ramshire, it is a great sheep-breeding county; its annual sheep fair is the largest held in Great Britain. I love every inch of Downshire: its dun-coloured and emerald downs, its lanes walled with honeysuckles in summer, and starred with primroses in spring. I like the way the white roads climb, with straightforward boldness, up the steep shoulders of the sloping prairie country. I like the floating blue of the distance, I like its lines of soldiery firs, I like its very weeds, even its molehills, the warts and wens, as it were, on its broad, honest, sunny face.

It was always thought, however, that the I write from Downshire now, for I am chasing affair of the lorcha Arrow, which occasioned the Health, at a hand gallop, all over the tawny present war, was merely the pretence for laying downs where the grizzled scorched grass is the foundation of one: the Chinese having long but a mere dry hide over the winter-chilled been extremely insolent in all their proceedings: earth. The saddle is not cold yet upon which I moreover, the term of the treaty had run out, have been scouring all this end of Downshire, and a new and more advantageous one was re-from Crockerton Furze to Stanton Corner. quired. But to return to Canton. On the night be-Jingling over the little grey bridge opposite my fore mentioned, one of the ships, lying off the Shamun Forts (which had been disarmed), found the shot coming in, not only from ahead, but also from abeam, which naturally made those on board conclude that they were being fired into by the forts, and next day a large working party were sent ashore, to do what they could towards knocking the forts down. It was thought unlikely that the Chinese would allow their forts (which were of European construction) to be demolished, without making an attempt to save them; and so it proved, for

country inn, jolts one of those country tiltcarts, with strained white awnings over them, which look like eggs, in the centre of which, having first scooped out the yolk and the white, sit the crimsoned-faced drivers, whistling a country tune, almost as pleasant as that of the blackbird's that sits on the apricot-tree at my window. That is the carrier (I know him well), for he passes here every morning at ten, and is on his way from Spireton to Deverton St. Mary's.

Oh, that cart and its singing blithe driver have had a pleasant trip of it since sunrise, passing

side the road, shutting out all horizon; not those, though they are in places as high as sea cliffs, or sown and bunched with thousands of primroses, and pendent with long deer's-tongue or the branching feathers of fern, where the twisted beech-roots are velveted with green moss, and where the violets carpet the ground under the pied hazel-boughs which just now are tasselled with catkins. No! these are the low downs that rapidly turn into the trim fields and cattle-dappled pastures of ordinary civilisation, and from them, down in the low country, you may in the distance see the train, which four hours hence will be in London, passing along, with a running smoke of steam like fire running along a train of gunpowder. I

fields all of a transparent emerald flicker with the thin curling tender blades of spring wheat, among which strut, and plume themselves, and hover, and flutter, the rooks, engaged in entomological researches, and large and glossy as black kittens! They have stirred lazily as the cart approached, have thrown our their pendent legs behind them, have worked up and down their wings ragged at the edge, and have resumed their studies almost before the cart has well jogged past the milestone, orange and black with twenty years' lichens. Young orchards, where tiles are hung to the top boughs to bend them over to a basket shape; fields spotted with flint heaps; folds full of the voices of the sheep waiting to be fed, has the cart passed by. Many long processions of wag-like the high downs where the horizon is a dim gons, baled with hay, or dark with fagots, has it passed, many horses proud of the crimson and yellow shaving-brushes on their heads, and of the sharp tingling bells upon their harness that chime far along the glaring white road along which they trample smokingly, the boiling dustclouds following them as if said roads were on fire.

blue one of twenty miles' distance, far as a ship can be seen at sea. I like the prairie grasp and comprehension of those high Ramshire Downs, black with furze, lined with plantations, studded with sheep, alive with rabbits; the keen, thin blue air vocal with plovers and blithe choruses of larks.

You are not in solitude or uncheered there, for But let the egg-shell jog on the pleasant road, on the high roads you meet the Autolychus dappled as it passes under the Deveril Park trees, tramp on his eleemosynary progress from Deveril and let me sketch a Downshire village with its to Todminster; now and then, some soldiers on russet thatch roofs, and here and there, at the leave, with their wallets behind them; carriers post-office or the farrier's, a blue slate or a red tile and flour-waggons, and that scarlet-runner, the one, for the thin blue plumes of wood-fire smoke reckless mail cart; not to mention chance trato feather over. There is something to my mind vellers, clergymen on their rounds, and, in the specially sheltering and cozy in the look of season, red scuds of fox-hunters on their way thatch, cut away over the windows, level yet to covert-to Railton-Spinney, or Waterdyke spiky like a rustic's hair on a fair-day or holiday; Corner. Nor can you go half a mile without I like it none the less if it be sponged and padded some dozens of rabbits charging with timid here and there with green crystalled moss. Greek temerity across the road, so swiftly that you see and Roman workers are all very well, but they little but a flirt of white tail near the furzeseem fools, in my Downshire mind, to the brave bush, as they disappear like Roderick Dhu's souls that devised those hearty lovable Tudor clansmen. You know that every thorn - bush cottages, built of stone, warm and lasting, scorn-you pass, is peopled. Then the blackbirds ful of the weather, that mellows them to the exact tone and crustiness of the outside of a Stilton, and covers them with lichens all in orange blots, and frosty patches, and grey scales and shadings, to the top ridge of the breathing chimney where the starlings chatter and twist their glistening necks in a coquettish and fantastic way. I honour those wise and comfortable thinkers in ruffs and doublets, who devised the Tudor cottages of Ramshire, with their porches so hospitable and kindly in cold and rain, and their strong mullioned windows so free to the air and light yet so lordly-looking, and so good for children to look out of, and old men to bask in. I like to see the little cottage beehives in the garden, among the cloves, carnations, and roses, with their little bee merchants dragging down all the flowers around. I like to hear, in the evenings when the moon has a golden halo round it, as if it were melting into shapeless brightness, the drag and tinkle of the spades at work in the cottage garden, just beyond the vicar's laurels, where the thrushes are rehearsing for their daybreak concert.

The high downs, too, are my special delight; not those that rise in broad green shoulders on either

run like rats about the thorn-bushes, or break out with a chink and fluster, as if in their conceit each bird thought the whole world specially in pursuit of him. Or perhaps, if you tread softly on the turf, you will be amused by coming on one of those blind diplomatists, the mole, like a little roll of black velvet. Then, on the fallows beyond the downs, you will see the crested plover, with his white belly and dark wings, swooping about, and making signals of distress with that strange "peewit" note which I think I could imitate on the violin; and then, like a dark star, falls the lark from heaven, or rises, trembling, to the cloud; while the new-come cuckoo echoes his own name in the fir wood that pulses with the lulling murmurs of the wild doves, where the squirrel curls in his nest, and the great black raven tolls out his sullen croak, as if a friendly lamb were seriously ill in the neighbourhood, and his benevolent mind were troubled by his friend's indisposition.

But these are all episodical pleasures of the high downs, for the standing dish of delight is the incomparable glory of the far distance, with its heavenly radiance of cloudy blue, and its

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »