Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/201

Rh is impossible to say how much higher the prices of shares in even the most nonsensical and absurd of these bubbles might have mounted if the system had not received a sudden check from the very quarter whence it had derived its beginning and original impulse. "The taverns, coffee-houses, and even victualling-houses near the Exchange," Anderson goes on to relate, "were constantly crowded, and became the scenes of incredible extravagance. The very advertisements of those bubbles were so many as to fill up two or three sheets of paper in some of the daily newspapers for some months." Even the wildest of the schemes, he adds, "had a very considerable run, much money being got and lost by them; and, as for the great bulk of them, there were almost incredible numbers of transactions in them daily and hourly for ready money, and mostly at very advanced prices . . . . . . Moreover, great numbers of contracts were made for taking many of them at a future time." About midsummer it was calculated that the value of the stock of all the different companies and projects at the current prices exceeded five hundred millions sterling, or probably five times as much as the current cash of all Europe, and more than twice the worth of the fee-simple of all the land in the kingdom. But now, on the 18th of August, came out writs of scire facias, at the instance of the South Sea Company, directed against certain of the pretended companies expressly by name, and generally against all other projects promulgated contrary to law, all the subscribers to which were ordered to be prosecuted by the law officers of the crown. "This," continues Anderson, "instantly struck so general a panic amongst the conductors of all the undertakings, projects, or bubbles, that the suddenness as well as greatness of their fall was amazing. York Buildings stock, for instance, fell at once from 300 to 200; and in two days after neither it nor the other three undertakings expressly named in the scire facias had buyers at any price whatever. The more barefaced bubbles of all kinds immediately shrunk to their original nothing; their projectors shut up their offices and suddenly disappeared; and