s capital.
Persons of all ranks crowded to the house in such a manner that the
first subscription exceeded two millions of original stock. In a few
days this stock advanced to three hundred and forty pounds; and the
subscriptions were sold for double the price of the first payment.
Without entering into a detail of the proceedings, or explaining the
scandalous arts that were practised to enhance the value of the stock,
and decoy the unwary, we shall only observe, that by the promise of
prodigious dividends and other infamous arts, the stock was raised
to one thousand; and the whole nation infected with the spirit of
stock-jobbing to an astonishing degree. All distinction of party,
religion, sex, character, and circumstances, were swallowed up in this
universal concern, or in some such pecuniary project. Exchange-Alley was
filled with a strange concourse of statesmen and clergymen, churchmen
and dissenters, whigs and tories, physicians, lawyers, tradesmen, and
even with multitudes of females. All other professions and employments
were utterly neglected; and the people's attention wholly engrossed by
this and other chimerical schemes, which were known by the denomination
of bubbles. New companies started up every day under the countenance of
the prime nobility. The prince of Wales was constituted governor of the
Welsh copper company; the duke of Chandos appeared at the head of the
York-buildings company; the duke of Bridgewater formed a third, for
building houses in London and Westminster. About an hundred such schemes
were projected and put in execution, to the ruin of many thousands. The
sums proposed to be raised by these expedients amounted to three hundred
millions sterling, which exceeded the value of all the lands in England.
The nation was so intoxicated with the spirit of adventure, that people
became a prey to the grossest delusion. An obscure projector, pretending
to have formed a very advantageous scheme, which, however, he did not
explain, published proposals for a subscription, in which he promised
that in one month the particulars of his project should be disclosed. In
the meantime he declared that every person paying two guineas should be
entitled to a subscription for one hundred pounds, which would produce
that sum yearly. In one forenoon this adventurer received a thousand of
these subscriptions; and in the evening set out for another kingdom.
The king, before his departure, had issued a proclamation agai