Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/167

Rh at once to Sir Walter's, who smiled, re-lit his cigar, took the news coolly, and declined to believe it, and for the moment he was right.

Lockhart's account of the terrible failure in which Scott was involved is this: Whenever Constable signed a bill for the purpose of raising money among the bankers, for fear of accident, or any neglect in taking the bill up before it fell due, he deposited a counter-bill, signed by Ballantyne, on which, if need were, Constable might raise a sum of money equivalent to that for which he had pledged his word; but these counter-bills were allowed to lie in Constable's desk till they assumed the size of a "sheaf of stamps;" and when the hour of distress came, Constable rushed with these bills to the money-changers, and thus the Ballantynes who were liable to Constable for, say £25,000, were legally liable for £50,000. Constable, in his turn, carried on the same game with the London house of Hurst, Robinson, and Co., his agents—and upon a much larger scale. They neglected their own business of bookselling and entered heavily into speculation in hops, and in the panic of the close of 1825, availed themselves of Constable's credit, and he of the Ballantynes, and the loss descended upon their principal partner, Scott.

This account has been contradicted by the representatives of John Ballantyne, in two pamphlets, refuting Lockhart's history of the affair, and proving their side of the question by reference to the old account books; Cadell, Constable's quondam partner, and certainly not biassed in his favour, throws his vote in with the Ballantynes. The responsibilities they undertook were solely at the bidding of Scott, and for his benefit; and in proof of this, they quote a clause