7 - London Friends and Honesty in Business

Summary

In the context of trade, the most striking innovation of the eighteenth-century crisis is the monthly meetings’ increased sanctioning of Friends’ misconduct in business. The testimonies of denial after 1750 display a strong interest in Friends’ conduct of business, and particularly their payment of debts. In order to understand Friends’ relationship to debt, we need to be aware of contemporary attitudes towards credit, as well as the existing legislation on insolvency and bankruptcy. Debt and bankruptcy in the beginning of our period were generally regarded as moral failures. Over the course of the eighteenth century, this moral understanding was replaced by an economic one, as increasing commercialization generalized debt across a wider spectrum of society. However, it also became more controversial.

One of the most important factors shifting English attitudes to debt and bankruptcy came from changes led by the state in the management and distribution of public debt. Successive seventeenth-century governments struggled to finance England's many wars. The reign of Charles II saw the stop of the exchequer and subsequent financial crisis due to the government's inability to repay the loans it had taken out in order to finance war with the Dutch Republic. After the Glorious Revolution, William of Orange struggled to continue financing the Nine Years’ War against Louis XIV. The development of a new system of credit ‘became an interest of state’. In order to obtain new funds, the government tried a new strategy: it founded the Bank of England. The Bank lent the government money to continue the war. It raised these funds by issuing shares, with interest on income and profits then being paid out as dividends.

At the same time, up to 100 new joint stock companies sprang up between 1685 and 1695. Together, the Bank of England, the East India Company and the South Sea Company came to hold about a third of the government's public debt. The subscriptions to the Bank of England shares were open to all, ‘Native and foreigners, bodies politick and corporate’. The same was true for the joint stock trading companies. This constituted an important step: it turned credit into a commodity, which could be bought and sold. In consequence, new groups, i.e. anyone with money to purchase shares, could purchase government debt.