About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


10 Libertarian Papers 1 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/libpa10 and id is 1 raw text is: LIBERTARIAN PAPERS SPECULATION AND THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW COURTS, 1697-1845 JACKSON TAIT* In the same manner all laws against gaming never hinder it... yet all the great sums that are lost are punctually paid. Persons who game must keep their credit, else no body will deal with them. It is quite the same in stockjobbing. They who do not keep their credit will soon be turned out, and in the language of Change Alley be called a lame duck.1 IN 1766, ADAM SMITH keenly observed how essentially unenforceable regulatory legislation was in the chaotic eighteenth-century stock market. Yet according to economist Edward Stringham, the market continued to function under an informal self-regulatory system, a self-policing club.2 In the early eighteenth century, stock brokering was a relatively new occupation and in the process of professionalization. The earliest indication of individuals who 'Jackson Tait is a PhD candidate in history at Queen's University, Kingston. The author wishes to thank Doug Hay, the Western Legal Histories seminar at York University, and two anonymous reviewers from this journal for their comments at various stages of this article. CITATION INFORMATION FOR THIS ARTICLE: Jackson Tait. 2018. Speculation and the English Common Law Courts, 1697-1845. Libecaan Papers. 10 (1): 1-17. ONLINE AT: libertarianpapers.org. THIS ARTICLE IS subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses). I Adam Smith, Lectures on Juisprudence, edited by R L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein (Oxford: Calarendon Press, [1766] 1978), 538. 2 Edward Stringham, The Emergence of the London Stock Exchange as a Self- Policing Club, Journal ojPvate Ente nrse 17, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 1. VOL. 10, No. 1 (2018)