Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/233

 six oil companies; four harbour and river companies; four companies for supplying London with coal, cattle, and hay, and for paving the streets; six hemp, flax, and linen companies; five companies for carrying on the manufacture of silks and cottons; one for planting mulberry-trees in Chelsea Park, and breeding silkworms; fifteen mining companies; and some sixty more miscellaneous bubbles of the most preposterous character. One undertaking actually obtained subscriptions for an object "which in due time should be revealed!"

But the South Sea Company, the greatest bubble of the lot, having prosecuted some of the rival bubble companies, and obtained a writ of scire facias from the Queen's Bench, all stocks fell suddenly; and the South Sea scheme itself collapsed in the general ruin which ensued. The price of its stock fell from 1000l. to 175l. in a few weeks. The delusion was at an end, and the English nation awaking from its dreams of boundless wealth to a sense of its degradation, a terrible commercial distress ensued. Parliament stepped in at last with