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.

[17] Coxe's _Walpole_, Correspondence between Mr. Secretary
Craggs and Earl Stanhope.

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 the 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 saw-dust." This is no doubt
intended as a joke; but there is abundance of evidence to shew 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 which shewed, more completely
than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an
unknown adventurer, entitled "_A company for carrying on an undertaking of
great advantage, but nobody to know what it is_." Were not the fact stated
by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that
any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who
essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity, merely
stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in
five thousand shares of 100l. each, deposit 2l. per share. Each
subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to 100l. per annum per
share. How this immense profit was to be