amined the manuscript in Magdalene College, Cambridge. How far the memorial goes back, we are not informed by the historian. It is scarcely necessary to inquire how long Thomas Guy persisted in tasting "the sweets of this traffic" after he had once engaged in a profitable and honourable business.

But there are a few words in Maitland's narrative which appear to have been overlooked by those who have built the foundations of Guy's fortune upon seamen's tickets. He says, "Mr. Guy, discovering the sweets of this traffic, became an early dealer therein." But he adds something far more significant -"as well as in other government securities." From the Restoration to the Revolution the Government was constantly borrowing. The difficulty of moneymaking tradesmen, like Guy, was how to invest their savings. There was risk in lending to an unscrupulous Government; but men who were rapidly accumulating-in most cases heaping up riches by spending far less than they acquired—were content to run the risk. In 1692 a National Debt was created by Parliament, and then the process of lending to the State was wonderfully simplified. Guy had probably been an uneasy State creditor under the Government of Charles II. and James II. Under William III. his private interests and his public feeling would have led him willingly to take a portion of that loan of a million which was sanctioned by Act of Parliament. By this measure the funded debt of England was first established. Two years after this memorable era, Thomas Guy was himself in Parliament as one of the Members for Tamworth.

career.

His biography by Maitland points to his parliamentary "As he was a man of unbounded charity and universal benevolence, so was he likewise a great patron of liberty and the rights of his fellow-subjects; which, to his great honour, he strenuously asserted in divers Parliaments, whereof he was a Member." I can trace his name in every list of the House of Commons, from the third Parliament of William III. (1695) to the close of the first Parliament of Anne (1707). Whatever public services he might have rendered towards the Whig Government, I presume it was not "by purchasing seamen's tickets during Queen Anne's wars."

It was at this latter time that Guy appears to have been more occupied with his plans of benevolence than with political contentions. During the half century which followed the period I have assigned for his transitory dream of domestic happiness, he seems to have accumulated riches with some consistent purpose of usefully employing them. It is probable that, very early, a stimulus to exertion had arisen in his resolves, steadily carried out, to dedicate his gains to charitable uses. It is for this that he resists all the attractions of City honours. The prospective dignity of Lord Mayor has no charms for him, so he pays the customary fine of 500l. to avoid the office of Sheriff. Dunton, as we have seen, records that he had built almshouses in 1705. Two years later he built three new wards to St. Thomas's Hospital, besides being a regular benefactor of 1007. a year. The prosperous course of his financial operations, after this period, has been detailed by Mait

land. It was a very simple and straightforward proceeding for the investment of his accumulations. "In the year 1710, when the debt of the navy was increased to divers millions, an Act of Parliament was made to provide for the payment of that and other men's dues from the Government, by erecting the South Sea Company, into which the creditors of divers branches of the National Debt were empowered to subscribe the several sums due to them from the public." He goes on to state that Mr. Guy, being possessed of such securities to the amount of many thousand pounds, subscribed the same into the South Sea Company, it being the condition that the subscribers should receive an annual interest of six per cent. upon their respective subscriptions, until the same should be discharged by Parliament. During the subsequent ten years, when he was a fundholder at a moderate rate of interest-not a stockjobber-he made large benefactions to the Stationers' Company for poor members, and to Christ's Hospital. In 1720 came the culminating point of his prosperity. We borrow Maitland's account, which is simple and clear enough, to show how Guy profited by the scheme proposed to Parliament by the South Sea Company, for reducing some of the public debts by increasing their capital. "It no sooner received the sanction of Parliament than the national creditors from all parts came crowding to subscribe into the said company the several sums due to them from the Government, by which great run one hundred pounds of the company's stock that before was sold at one hundred and twenty pounds (at which time Mr. Guy

was possessed of forty-five thousand and five hundred pounds of the said stock), gradually arose to above one thousand and fifty pounds. Mr. Guy, wisely considering that the great rise of the stock was owing to the iniquitous management of a few, prudently began to sell out his stock at about three hundred (for that which probably at first did not cost him above fifty or sixty pounds), and continued selling till it arose to about six hundred, when he disposed of the last of his property in the said company." It thus appears that Mr. Guy's "gains" during this season of financial madness were not produced by buying at a low price and selling at a high price. He was an original large holder of South Sea Stock, and he followed the course of the market in wisely selling out at the right season. His decision of character would lead him to determine this critical question, which so many speculators fail to solve. When Sir Robert Walpole sold out at a profit of 1000 per cent., the rich bookseller might safely follow his lead in private as well as public affairs. He does not appear to have been a South Sea Director, or in any way a promoter of the scheme upon which was founded "the most enormous fabric of delusion that was ever raised amongst an industrious, thrifty, and prudent people." Thomas Guy was amongst the few sagacious ones who profited by the common phrensy. His fortune had arisen out of the slow accumulations of a long period of industry. When he was seventy-six years of age, there came a great and unexpected accession of wealth. The wonderful increase produced by the sale of the stock which he had regarded as a safe investment, "occa

sioned," says Malcolm, "those the best acquainted with his affairs to aver that, by the execution of the pernicious South Sea scheme, Mr. Guy got more money within the space of three months than what the erecting, furnishing, and endowing his hospital amounted to." The building cost nearly nineteen thousand pounds. The endowment by him amounted to two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. He had the satisfaction of knowing that his gains had been worthily applied, when he saw his hospital roofed in before his death in 1724.

I have been desirous of defending Thomas Guy against the charge of having made his great riches chiefly by usury and stock-jobbing, because I believe that the printing and sale of Bibles for nearly half a century would have secured for him very large accumulations. Let me look a little more particularly at this question.

There is preserved, in the handwriting of Christopher Barker, in 1582, A Note of the offices and other special licences for printing granted by her Majesty, with a conjecture of their valuation.' This printer to the Queen says that the whole Bible requires so great a cost, that his predecessors kept the realm twelve years without venturing a single edition; but that he had desperately adventured to print four in a year and a half, expending about 30007., to the certain ruin of his wife and family if he had died in the time. Of these four editions, three were in folio, and one in quarto. The sale of the folios would necessarily be limited by the cost, in the way that the same patentee complains of as to his Book of Common Prayer, "which few or none do