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.