foundation, must at last come to nothing, and the only use is to raise estates upon the first advance of it; and perhaps it may appear at last, that the imaginary value of the stock declining in the humours of the times, it will by no means be able to support itself, which, whenever it happens, blows it up all at once."
Such were the prophetic reasonings of our observer, which the event fully justified by the ruin of thousands in England. To authenticate this assertion, I shall present the reader a succession of paragraphs from the Newspapers, pointing out the ramifications from the parent stock, and the facility with which the publick were imposed upon.
"Here has been the oddest bite put upon the Town that ever was heard of. We having of late had several new subscriptions set on foot, for raising great sums of money for erecting Offices of Insurance, &c.; at length, some gentlemen, to convince the world how easy it was for projectors to impose upon mankind, set up a pretended office in Exchange-alley, for the receiving subscriptions for raising a million of money to establish an effectual Company of Insurers as they called it. Upon which, the day being come to subscribe, the people flocked in, and paid down 5s. for every 1000l. they subscribed, pursuant to the Company's proposals; but, after some hundreds had so subscribed (that the thing might be
fully known), the gentlemen were at the expence to advertise, that the people might have their money again without any deductions; and to let them know that the persons who paid in their money, contented themselves with a fictitious name, set by an unknown hand to the receipts delivered out for the money so paid in; and that the said name was composed only of the first letters of six persons names concerned in the said publication." Weekly Packet, January 2, 1719-20.
The original Weekly Journal immediately after observes: "It was the observation of a very witty knight many years ago, that the English people were something like a flight of birds at a barn door; shoot among them and kill ever so many, the rest shall return to the same place in a very little time, without any remembrance of the evil that had befallen their fellows. Thus the English, though they have had examples enough in these latter times of people ruined by engaging in Projects, yet they still fall in with the next that appears. Thus, after Neal's Lottery, how many were trumped up in a year or two's time, till the Legislature itself was fain to suppress them. Sometime after this, there was a new project set on foot for the prodigious improvement of small sums of money, in which they who put in, for example, 5l. must by the proposal make above 100l. of it in a year's time. People never
examined how they could perform this proposal; but, blind with the hopes of gain, threw their money into the Denmark-court Office in so extravagant a manner, that, if the humour could have gone on, they must have had passed through their hands in a few months half the cash of the nation. The success of this Office begot many more in all parts of the Town, all which ended in the ruin of many families.
"Our cunning men are now carrying on a cause very much like these that are past, but infinitely more extravagant than all of them; though I believe it will prove less detrimental than any of them, because they are already multiplied to that degree, that the sharpers, alias projectors, are infinitely too numerous for the bubbles; since the Stocks they have proposed to raise amounts to 28,000,000l.; above twice as much as the current coin of the Nation, nay more than the third-part of all the payments the circulation of that current coin performs in the whole kingdom; but, because the placing these projects all in one view must certainly be useful to your readers, I here send you an abstract of them.
"For a general insurance on houses and merchandize, at the three Tuns, Swithin's-alley, 2,000,000l.
For building and buying ships to let or freight, at Garraway's, Exchange-alley, 1,200,000l.
To be lent by way of Loan on Stock at Garraway's, 1,200,000l.