taken possession of the minds of
Englishmen. There is an enterprising person who declares that he can
coin money out of cobwebs, raise wool upon egg-shells, and make grass
grow out of marrow-bones. He has a project "for the recovery of drowned
land," a scheme for a new patent for the dressing of dog-skins for
gloves, a plan for the bottling of ale, a device for making wine out of
blackberries, and various other schemes cut and dry for what would now be
called floating companies to make money. The civilized world is visited
with this epidemic of project and speculation from time to time. In the
reign of George the First such a mania attacked England much more
fiercely than it had done even in the days of Ben Jonson. It came to us
this time from France. The close of a great war is always a tempting and
a favorable time for such enterprises. Finances are out of order; a
season of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resources
are to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he is
when he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is
an air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, like
the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, the
enterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if only
human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been brought
into a condition of something very like {184} bankruptcy by the long and
wasting war; and a projector was found who promised to supply the
deficiency as boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in the
second part of "Faust." John Law, a Scotchman, and unquestionably a man
of great ability and financial skill, had settled in France in
consequence of having fought a duel and killed his man in his own
country. [Sidenote: 1710-1720--The South Sea Company] Law set up a
company which was to have a monopoly of the trade of the whole
Mississippi region in North America, and on condition of the monopoly was
to pay off the national debt of France. A scheme of the kind within due
limitations would have been reasonable enough, so far as the working of
the Mississippi region was concerned; but Law went on extending and
extending the scope of its supposed operations, until it might almost as
well have attempted to fold in the orb of the earth. The shares in his
company went up with a sudden bound. He had the patronage of the Regent
and of all the Court