ages—these two powers combined to influence at once the highest merchants and the lowest jobbing circles, have been turned by Russia to most profitable account. Owing to these two influences, and to the ignorance which prevails about her interior resources, Russia, of all the European Continental Governments, stands highest in the estimation of ’Change, whatever may be thought of her in other quarters.
But the Hopes lend only the prestige of their name; the real work is done by the Jews, and can only be done by them, as they monopolize the machinery of the loanmongering mysteries by concentrating their energies upon the barter-trade in securities, and the changing of money and negotiating of bills in a great measure arising therefrom. Take Amsterdam, for instance, a city harbouring many of the worst descendants of the Jews whom Ferdinand and Isabella drove out of Spain, and who, after lingering a while in Portugal, were driven thence also, and eventually found a safe place of retreat in Holland. In Amsterdam alone they number not less than 35,000, many of whom are engaged in this gambling and jobbing of securities. These men have their agents at Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, Nymegen, Delft, Groningen, Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels, and various other places in the Netherlands and surrounding German and French territories. Their business is to watch the moneys available for investment and keenly observe where they lie. Here and there and everywhere that a little capital courts investment, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted up about the locale of the hard cash in a traveller's valise or pocket than those Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader.
These small Jewish agents draw their supplies from the big Jewish houses, such as that of Hollander and Lehren, Königswarter, Raphael, Stern, Sichel, Bischoffsheim of Amsterdam, Ezekiels of Rotterdam. Hollander and Lehren are
