oney
will be real, and the other half only Gasconnade.[22] The matter will be
likewise much mended, if the merchants continue to carry off our gold,
and our goldsmiths to melt down our heavy silver.

AN ESSAY

ON

ENGLISH BUBBLES.

BY THOMAS HOPE, ESQ.

NOTE.

The excitement and even fury which were prevalent in England and
France during the years 1719 and 1720 over Law's South Sea schemes
afforded Swift an opportunity for the play of his satire by way of
criticism on projects which appeared to him to be of the same
character. News from France on the Mississippi Scheme which, in
1719, was at the height of its stock-jobbing success, gave glorious
accounts of fortunes made in a night, and of thousands who had
become rich and were living in unheard of luxury. Schemes were
floated on every possible kind of ventures, and so plentiful was
the "paper money" that nothing was too absurd for speculators. All
these schemes, which soon came to nought, went, later, by the name
of "Bubbles," and this essay of Swift's touches the matter with his
usual satire.

The time chosen for the proposal for the establishment of a
National Bank in Ireland was not a happy one. It was made in 1720
when the "Bubbles" had burst and found thousands ruined and
pauperized. Swift, always an enemy to schemes of any kind, classed
that of the bank with the rest of the "Bubbles," and, although the
plan itself was a real effort to relieve Ireland, and might have
effected its purpose, the terror of the "Bubbles" was sufficient to
wreck it.

It required very little from Swift to insure its rejection, and
rejected it was by the Irish legislature, before whose
consideration it was brought.

* * * * *

Some doubt seems to obtain as to the authenticity of this "Essay on
English Bubbles," which, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, may "be
considered as introductory to the other" tracts on the Bank
Project. This essay, however, appears in the edition of 1720 of
"The Swearer's Bank," and, although it is not included in the
"Miscellanies" of 1722, it is accepted by Faulkner in his collected
edition of Swift's works. The present text is based on that
prefixed to the edition of "The Swearer's Bank," 1720.

[T. S.]

AN ESSAY ON ENGLISH BUB