Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/192

190 were afterwards on several occasions applied fofor [sic] the same purpose; but, although the English whale fishery was thus kept from absolutely expiring, it never was prosecuted with any considerable or general success, nor could be regarded as one of the regular branches of the national industry, till after the close of the present period.

The year 1720 is memorable in our financial history for the famous South Sea scheme, or project adopted by the Government and the legislature of effecting the liquidation of the national debt by the instrumentality of the mercantile company of that name, which had been incorporated in 1711 by act of parliament, for the very different object of carrying on a trade to the South Seas. As soon as the company was placed in its new and extraordinary position, the eagerness to purchase its stock became a universal mania. But, wild as was the epidemic [sic]phrensy that seized men's minds on this occasion, and disastrous as it proved in its consequences to the fortunes of numerous individuals, it was probably neither in its beginning symptomatic of anything unsubstantial or tending to a decline in the national wealth, nor in its ultimate consequences very much of a public or general calamity. We have just seen, that for some years after the accession of George I. our exports to foreign countries rather diminished than increased; but we should probably misinterpret that fact if we assumed it to be an evidence of any falling off in our produce and manufactures, as if we sent less of them abroad because we had less at home. It is much more likely that the contrary was the case—that we had less to spare to our neighbours because we were able to consume more ourselves, or, in other words, that our merchants were partially withdrawn from the foreign market by the temptations of an improved market at home. If it was so, the importance of our home trade is and always has been so prodigiously superior to that of our foreign trade, that is to say, the demand for our produce and manufactures abroad has at all times been so insignificant in comparison with their consumption among ourselves, that a slight falling off in the quantity of our