the directors had tasted the profits of
their scheme, and it was not likely that they should quietly allow the
stock to find its natural level without an effort to raise it.
Immediately their busy emissaries were set to work. Every person
interested in the success of the project endeavored to draw a knot of
listeners round him, to whom he expatiated on the treasures of the South
American seas. Exchange Alley was crowded with attentive groups. One
rumor alone, asserted with the utmost confidence, had an immediate
effect upon the stock. It was said that Earl Stanhope had received
overtures in France from the Spanish government to exchange Gibraltar
and Port Mahon for some places on the coast of Peru, for the security
and enlargement of the trade in the South Seas. Instead of one annual
ship trading to those ports, and allowing the King of Spain 25 per cent.
out of the profits, the company might build and charter as many ships as
it pleased, and pay no percentage whatever to any foreign potentate.

"Visions of ingots danced before their eyes," and stock rose rapidly. On
April 12th, five days after the bill had become law, the directors
opened their books for a subscription of a million, at the rate of three
hundred pounds for every one hundred pounds capital. Such was the
concourse of persons of all ranks that this first subscription was found
to amount to above two millions of original stock. It was to be paid in
five payments, of sixty pounds each for every one hundred pounds. In a
few days the stock advanced to 340, and the subscriptions were sold for
double the price of the first payment. To raise the stock still higher
it was declared in a general court of directors, on April 21st, that the
midsummer dividend should be 10 per cent., and that all subscriptions
should be entitled to the same. These resolutions answering the end
designed, the directors, to improve the infatuation of the moneyed men,
opened their books for a second subscription of a million, at 4 per
cent. Such was the frantic eagerness of people of every class to
speculate in these funds that in the course of a few hours no less than
a million and a half was subscribed at that rate.

In the mean time innumerable joint-stock companies started up
everywhere. They soon received the name of "bubbles," the most
appropriate that imagination could devise. The populace are often most
happy in the nicknames they employ. None could be more apt than that of
"bubbl