Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of
this insanely reckless system of trading. The native firms laid it down
as a rule that they would decline to transact business with any house
in the trade which refused to grant them their privilege. In the ease of
Turlington's house, the foreign merchants had drawn their bills on him
for sums large in the aggregate, if not large in themselves; had long
since turned those bills into cash in their own markets, for their own
necessities; and had now left the money which their paper represented
to be paid by their London correspondents as it fell due. In some
instances, they had sent nothing but promises and excuses. In others,
they had forwarded drafts on firms which had failed already, or which
were about to fail, in the crisis. After first exhausting his
resources in ready money, Mr. Branca had provided for the more pressing
necessities by pledging the credit of the house, so far as he _could_
pledge it without exciting suspicion of the truth. This done, there were
actually left, between that time and Christmas, liabilities to be met to
the extent of forty thousand pounds, without a farthing in hand to pay
that formidable debt.
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