VI. SIX MILLIONAIRE BANKERS.

TOWARDS the end of the last century, when George the Third was King, and when Meyer Amschelm kept a broker's shop in the Jew-lane of Frankfort under the sign of the Red Shield— "Rothschild"-there were only six bankers in London who had the repute of being possessed of extraordinary wealth, or were what is now termed millionaires. These six bankers were Thomas Coutts, Sir Francis Baring, Joseph Denison, Henry Hope, Lewis Tessier, and Peter Thellusson. Of Thomas Coutts and the interesting incidents of his early career mention has been made already, and it need be added only that he began life with a capital under a thousand, and died worth nearly a million of money. The career of Sir Francis Baring was still more successful. Like their modern successors and rivals, the world-famous bankers of the Red Shield, the Barings came from Germany. The immediate ancestor of the family was Herr

Francis Baring, pastor of the Lutheran Church at Bremen, who came over to this country in the latter part of his life His son, John Baring, established himself as a cloth-manufacturer at Larkbeer, in Devonshire, and by the exercise of untiring industry acquired a considerable fortune. He left four sons, two of whom, John and Francis, came to London and set up in business as importers of wools and dye-stuffs, acting also as agents to the Larkbeer cloth factory. The elder brother, John, afterwards withdrew from business, and retired to Exeter; whereupon Francis, then sole head of the firm, wound up his old affairs and began devoting himself to banking transactions. He speculated largely in Government loans, and soon became the friend and financial adviser of the Premier, Lord Shelburne, who used to style him the "Prince of Merchants." Shelburne's successor, William Pitt, thought it necessary to gain the goodwill of the influential banker by the gift of a baronetcy, and on the 29th of May, 1793, Mr. Baring became Sir Francis Baring. The founder of the great banking house-born April 18, 1740-died September 12, 1810, leaving behind him a fortune estimated at above two millions sterling. Francis Baring in his own person was, without

comparison, the most successful accumulator of wealth of the eighteenth century.

It is not without interest to follow the fortunes of the house of Baring for another generation or two. Sir Francis Baring, by his marriage with a niece of the Archbishop of Canterbury, left five sons, the three eldest of whom-Thomas, Alexander, and Henry-became partners in the banking establishment. Sir Thomas withdrew from business soon after the death of his father, thinking it unbecoming in a baronet to be a banker; and Mr. Henry Baring likewise retired not long after, for a very different reason. Henry Baring was passionately addicted to gambling, which he carried on at a high rate at the Palais Royal, Paris, and other famous "hells" of the time, where his nightly appearance, with mountains of gold and bank notes before him, was the wonder of all beholders, He was by no means an unlucky disciple of the rouge-et-noir; for he several times broke the "Entreprise générale des jeux," carrying off sums which would have been princely fortunes to any but Barings. Notwithstanding this luck, his presence at the Continental gaming tables was naturally considered a scandal at the London banking-house of Baring Brothers, and, after some negotiation,

Henry Baring was induced to withdraw from the firm. There now remained as head of the establishment, Alexander Baring, born October 27, 1774, and brought up in the house of Messrs. Hope. When the Messrs. Hope returned to England, in consequence of the occupation of Holland by the troops of revolutionary France, Alexander Baring left the establishment and went to the United States, where he married the eldest daughter of Mr. William Bingham, then considered the richest man in America, and who brought him a fortune of 900,000 dollars. Mr. Alexander Baring had no sooner become head of the house when he entered on a series of monetary operations on a gigantic scale and of European importance. The greatest of these— one of the greatest ever undertaken by a single banker-was, that he freed France from the incubus of an occupation of Russian, Prussian, and Austrian armies of 50,000 men each, by the loan of a sum of 27,238,938 francs, or about 1,100,000, at 5 per cent. rentes. This momentous transaction occasioned the saying of the witty French Premier, the Duke de Richelieu : "There are six great Powers in Europe: England, France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Baring Brothers."

Alexander Baring-" Alexander the Great" -died at Longleat, Wilts, May 13, 1848, having been elevated to the peerage, under the title of Lord Ashburton, in 1835. He left four sons, the eldest of whom, William Bingham-who died in March, 1864-succeeded him in the family honours, while the second, Francis, born in May, 1800, took for a while the nominal direction of the firm. In this capacity he engaged in some remarkable transactions. He purchased, among other things, the whole of the territory surrounding the lake Tezcuco, on the island of which stands the city of Mexico, and thus made himself, in a sense, master of the capital of a great country. The other members of the firm of Baring and Co. were, however, startled by the gigantic nature of the purchase, and, after great efforts, succeeded in getting rid of the supposed Frankenstein. Had they kept their purchase, who knows but that the "Notables," who sat in electoral conclave in July, 1863, might have chosen a member of the house of Baring, instead of the house of Hapsburg, to be Emperor of Mexico?

Mr. Francis Baring married, in 1833, the daughter of the Duke of Bassano, Napoleon's Secretary of State, and settled at Paris, in one