A Lamp to the Path / Or, The Word of God in the Heart, the Home, the Workshop and the Market-Place

by W. K. Tweedie

DELUSIONS BELIEVED.

One such illustration may suffice for all: but there is another memorable Scheme to which it seems proper to refer—that which is known in this country as the South Sea Bubble. THE
SOUTH SEA
BUBBLE. About the beginning of last century, an opinion generally prevailed that the wealth of South America was exhaustless. A privileged Company to trade with it was accordingly formed, and though the genius of the French and the English are widely different, a passion for speculation and gold seized upon our countrymen, as violent and absorbing as that which appeared in connection with the Mississippi Scheme of France. By various devices, in which the principles of the Word of God were outraged, the managers of the South Sea Scheme excited expectations of the most visionary kind. The mania seized upon the nation through all its borders. The stock of the Company rose till it was eagerly bought at a premium of 1000 per cent. Catching the general spirit, joint-stock companies sprang up everywhere as rapidly as the Prophet’s gourd; DELUSIONS
BELIEVED. and so willing were men to be deceived, that schemes which should have been put down on their first appearance were eagerly embraced. One of these was denominated, “A Company for carrying on an Undertaking of Great Advantage, but nobody to know what it is;”[27] and yet Englishmen, proverbially calculating and cautious in their financial affairs, actually embarked in that transparent deception, like men infatuated by their haste to be rich. The projector of the scheme asked a deposit of £2 on each share of £100, and the promised return was £100 per annum. On the first day of his scheme he received about 1000 deposits, or nearly £2000, and with that sum he immediately and for ever disappeared. In this manner, the original South Sea Scheme branched out into eighty-seven cognate speculations, each of which was eventually a fountain of misery to multitudes.

THE RULING PASSION.

THE
RULING
PASSION. The following sentences graphically tell the state of London and this kingdom at the period referred to:—“From morning till evening, ’Change Alley was filled to overflowing with one dense moving mass of living beings, composed of the most incongruous materials, and in all things, save the mad pursuit wherein they were employed, utterly opposed in their principles and feelings, and far asunder in their stations of life and the professions which they followed. Statesmen and clergymen deserted their high stations to enter upon this grand theatre of speculation and gambling; and churchmen and dissenters left their fierce disputes, and forgot their wranglings upon church government, in this deep and hazardous game they were playing for worldly treasures, and for riches which, even if won, were liable to disappear within the hour of their creation. Whigs and Tories buried their weapons of political warfare, discarded party animosities, and mingled together in kind and friendly intercourse, each exulting as their stocks advanced in price, and murmuring dissatisfaction and disappointment when fortune frowned upon their wild operations; and lawyers, physicians, merchants, and tradesmen, forsook their employments, neglected their business, and disregarded their engagements, to whirl giddily along with the swollen stream, to be at last ingulfed in the wide sea of bankruptcy. Men of the highest rank were deeply engaged in stock-jobbing transactions; and investments in the most worthless bubbles of the age were made by them in heavy sums, and without the least hesitation or previous inquiry. Females mixed with the crowd, and, forgetting the stations and employments which nature had fitted them to adorn, dealt boldly and extensively in the bubbles that rose before them, and, like those by whom they were surrounded, rose from poverty to wealth, and from that were thrust down to beggary and want, and all in one short week, and perhaps before the evening which terminated the first day of their speculations. Ladies of high rank, regardless of every appearance of dignity, and blinded by the prevailing infatuation, drove to the shops of their milliners and haberdashers, and there met stockbrokers whom they regularly employed, and through whom extensive sales were daily negotiated. In the midst of the excitement, all distinctions of party and religion, circumstances and character, were swallowed up. Bubbles were blown into existence on every hand, and stocks of every conceivable name, nature, and description, were issued to an incredible extent.”[28]

THE FOLLY OF MAN’S WISDOM.

THE FOLLY
OF MAN’S
WISDOM. But this also came to an end; and disasters followed which rent society like an earthquake. The leaders in the scheme were consigned to prison, or compelled to seek refuge in exile; while their deluded victims were left amid poverty, and its attendant woe, to gather the native fruit of the thorns and the thistles, from which they had expected grapes and figs. It was miserable comfort to reflect, that their own baseless expectations had abetted the delusion, and made the ruin complete.

RESULTS.

RESULTS. And such is another illustration of the effects which follow the infatuation of putting Mammon in the place of God, or delivering up the whole soul to the pursuit of what the Holy One declares to be unsatisfying as a dream. It is thus that he warns men, in his providence, against that lust of speculation, which is often as ruinous as the lust of power, or any passion which drives men headlong upon misery.

The very titles of some of the schemes which were projected at the period now referred to, stamp them with infatuation. The nation had become an aggregate of gamblers, and the following are some of the stakes:—

A Company for Increasing Children’s Fortunes.