Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/401

A.D. 1720.] and two days afterwards it passed the lords, but with a minority of only seventeen. Such was the estimation of this bill by the peers, although lord Cowper, in the debate, described it as resembling the project of the Trojan horse—ushered in with great pomp and acclamation, but contrived for treachery and destruction. Such, too, was the infatuation of stock-holders, that, although Cowper had declared that "the main public intention of the bill, the re-purchase of annuities, would meet with insuperable difficulties," no sooner was the bill carried than numbers of these annuitants hurried to the South Sea House to dispose of their claims before they had received any offer, or knew what terms would be allowed them. When the offer was made of eight years and a half's purchase, it was much less than the excited annuitants had calculated on; but still, within six days, nearly two-thirds of the whole number had accepted it. When the royal assent was given to the bill, the funds rose immediately from one hundred to above three hundred.

The king, as we have said, set out for Hanover on the 14th of June, and Walpole, now become one of the ministry, retired to his seat at Hampton. But he was not long there before he was disturbed by the reports of the mania already raging to such an extent as to justify his worst prognostics.

The South Sea Company had immediately on the passing of the bill proposed a subscription of one million, and this was so eagerly seized on that, instead of one, two millions were subscribed. To stimulate this already too feverish spirit in the public, the company adopted the most false and unjustifiable means. They had eight millions and a half to pay over to government as a douceur for granting them the management of the funds; and, therefore, to bring this in rapidly, they propagated the most lying rumours. It was industriously circulated that lord Stanhope had received overtures at Paris to exchange Gibraltar and Port Mahon for invaluable gold lands in Peru! The South Sea trade was vaunted as a source of boundless wealth in itself. In August the stocks had risen from the one hundred and thirty of the last winter to one thousand! Men sold houses and land to become shareholders; merchants of eminence neglected their affairs and crippled their resources to reap imaginary profits. The company flattered the delusion to the utmost. They opened a third, and even a fourth subscription, larger than the former, and passed a resolution that from next Christmas their yearly dividend should not be less than fifty per cent! In labouring to increase the public delusion they seem to have caught the contagion themselves, for they began to act, not like men who were blowing a bubble which they knew must speedily burst, but like persons who had mounted permanently into the very highest seat of prosperous power. They assumed the most arrogant and overbearing manner, even towards men of the highest station and influence. "We have made them kings," said a member of parliament, "and they deal with everybody as such."

The spirit of gambling thus set going by government itself, soon surpassed all bounds, and burst forth in a thousand shapes. It was well known that the king, his mistresses, his courtiers, his son and heir-apparent, were all dabbling busily in the muddy waters of this huge pool of trickery and corruption. A thousand other schemes were invented and made public to draw in fresh gudgeons, and the prince of Wales allowed his name to stand as governor of a Welsh Copper Company. Walpole and the speaker of the house of commons earnestly entreated him to withdraw it, or that "The Prince of Wales' Bubble" would be cried in 'Change Alley, and he would be attacked in parliament. It was not, however, till the company was threatened with prosecution and exposed to loss that his royal highness withdrew his name, with a profit of forty thousand pounds.

The prince's example, however, had been extensively followed by the aristocracy. All sorts of bubble schemes were announced, with nobles as their patrons. The duke of Chandos headed one, the earl of Westmoreland another. 'Change Alley now became the fac-simile of the Rue Quincampoix; like it, the throng of purchasers of stock in these different companies became so great, that it was occupied with tables out of doors as well as within, at which busy clerks were taking the orders of the speculators. All ranks and classes rushed thither — dukes, lords, country squires, bishops, clergy, both established and dissenting, were mixed up with stockjobbers and brokers in eager traffic. Ladies of all ranks mingled in the throng, struggling through the press and straining their voices to be heard amid the hubbub. No foreigner, says lord Mahon, could then have charged the English with taciturnity. There, and all over the kingdom, were advertised and hawked about the following and other schemes:—"Wrecks to be fished for on the Irish coast; insurances of horses and other cattle (two millions); insurances of losses by servants; to make salt water fresh; for building of hospitals for bastard children; for building of ships against pirates; for making of oil from sun-flower seeds; for improving of malt liquors; for recovering of seamen's wages; for extracting of silver from lead; for the transmuting of quicksilver into a malleable and fine metal; for making of iron with pitcoal; for importing a number of large jackasses from Spain; for trading in human hair; for fatting of hogs; for a wheel for perpetual motion; and finally, for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed." Such was the height to which the mania had now risen, that one thousand shares of two guineas each were subscribed in the first morning for this nameless project, with which the wag of a projector decamped in the afternoon; as it would seem, rather unnecessarily, for the strength of the delusion might probably have extended to the pocketing of many thousands. A prospectus which was circulated in ridicule of these mad schemes — namely, "For the invention of melting down sawdust and chips, and casting them into clean deal boards without cracks or flaws" — appears not a whit more extravagant than the rest, and would no doubt have obtained subscriptions, if seriously attempted. The railway mania of our own time leaves us little room to laugh at our ancestors on this occasion.

The South Sea Company, with a folly of which extreme greed only is capable, endeavoured to put down these rival bubbles, and obtained an order from the lords justices and writs of scire facias against several of these new bubbles. It was like raising a wind to blow away the bubbles, forgetting that their own was a bubble too, and would go with them. The moment that the people began to distrust