es." Some of them lasted for a week or a fortnight, and were no
more heard of, while others could not even live out that short span of
existence. Every evening produced new schemes and every morning new
projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot
pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of
Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared forty
thousand pounds by his speculations. The Duke of Bridgewater started a
scheme for the improvement of London and Westminster, and the Duke of
Chandos another. There were nearly a hundred different projects, each
more extravagant and deceptive than the other. To use the words of the
_Political State_, they were "set on foot and promoted by crafty knaves,
then pursued by multitudes of covetous fools, and at last appeared to
be, in effect, what their vulgar appellation denoted them to be--bubbles
and mere cheats." It was computed that near one million and a half
sterling was won and lost by these unwarrantable practices, to the
impoverishment of many a fool and the enriching of many a rogue.

Some of these schemes were plausible enough, and, had they been
undertaken at a time when the public mind was unexcited, might have been
pursued with advantage to all concerned. But they were established
merely with a view of raising the shares in the market. The projectors
took the first opportunity of a rise to sell out, and next morning the
scheme was at an end. Maitland, in his _History of London_, gravely
informs us that one of the projects which received great encouragement
was for the establishment of a company "to make deal boards out of
sawdust." This is, no doubt, intended as a joke; but there is abundance
of evidence to show that dozens of schemes, hardly a whit more
reasonable, lived their little day, ruining hundreds ere they fell. One
of them was for a wheel for perpetual motion--capital one million;
another was "for encouraging the breed of horses in England, and
improving of glebe and church lands, and repairing and rebuilding
parsonage and vicarage houses." Why the clergy, who were so mainly
interested in the latter clause, should have taken so much interest in
the first, is only to be explained on the supposition that the scheme
was projected by a knot of the fox-hunting parsons, once so common in
England. The shares of this company were rapidly subscribed for.

But the most absurd and preposterous of all, and wh