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CONSOLS IN A GREAT WAR 197
Debt to be £630,000,000 or £670,000,000 including
the Local Loans Stock, nearly the whole of it in excess
of £400,000,000 is held by the National Debt Commis-
sioners for the savings banks or by other Government
departments. The small amount which can be dealt in
is shown in another way. The amount of the leading
stock, Consols, actually quoted in the Stock Exchange
official list is £522,000,000; and if we allow that some
part of this amount is h~ld by the savings banks and
other Government departments, though their holdings,
of course, are not exclusively in Consols, we can easily
see that the amount of Consols themselves in the
hands of the public is probably not much more than
£ 400,000,000. When it is considered, moreover, that
the greater part of this sum is locked up, being held
by trustees and other holders who are not in a position
to sell, or by banks who are not so limited, but who
prefer for various reasons to invest in Con sols or keep
a portion of the reserve in Consols, and who never
,sell, it can be quite well understood that the amount
of the stock available for actual market purposes is so
small as to take from it not merely the predominance
but the pre-eminence it once had among securities dealt
in on the Stock Exchange.
4. What is equally undoubted is that the stock in
the hands of dealers, technically or practically so, has
so greatly diminished that now the markets for Consols
cannot properly be caned a great leading market at
all. There is no longer a class of large holders in-
terested in the security constantly ready to buy and
sell, and consequently in Conso]s there is no longer
that sort of market which has been described above
as a free and natural first-rate market on the Stock
Exchange. I am assured that as a matter of fact
the number of capitalists constituting the Con sol
market, and able to engage in large business, has con-
I This is quite confirmed by the last returns as to the holding or
Government securities by the different departments or the Govern-
ment.