The punishment fell heavy on the chief offenders, who, after all, had only shared in the general lust for gold. Mr. Charles Stanhope, a great gainer, managed to escape by the influence of the Chesterfield family, and the mob threatened vengeance. Aislabie, who had made some £800,000, was expelled the House, sent to the Tower, and compelled to devote his estate to the relief of the sufferers. Sir George Caswall was expelled the House, and ordered to refund £250,000. The day he went to the Tower, the mob lit bonfires and danced round them for joy. When by a general whip of the Whigs the Earl of Sunderland was acquitted, the mob grew menacing again. That same day the elder Craggs died of apoplexy. The report was that he had poisoned himself, but excitement and the death of a son, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, were the real causes. His enormous fortune of a million and a half was scattered among the sufferers. Eventually the directors were fined £2,014,000, each man being allowed a small modicum of his fortune. Sir John Blunt was only allowed £5,000 out of his fortune of £183,000; Sir John Fellows was allowed £10,000 out of £243,000; Sir Theodore Janssen, £50,000 out of £243,000; Sir John Lambert, £5,000 out of £72,000. One director, named Gregsley, was treated with especial severity, because he was reported to have once declared he would feed his carriage-horses off gold; another, because years before he had been mixed up with some harmless but unsuccessful speculation. According to Gibbon the historian, it was the Tory directors who were stripped the most unmercifully.
"The next consideration of the Legislature," says Charles Mackay, "after the punishment of the directors, was to restore public credit. The scheme of Walpole had been found insufficient, and had fallen into disrepute. A computation was made of the whole capital stock of the South Sea Company at the end of the year 1720. It was found to amount to £37,800,000, of which the stock allotted to all the proprietors only reached £24,500,000. The remainder of £13,300,000 belonged to the Company in their corporate capacity, and was the profit they had made by the national delusion. Upwards of £8,000,000 of this was taken from the Company, and divided among the proprietors and subscribers generally, making a dividend of about £33 6s. 8d. per cent. This was a great relief. It was further ordered that such persons as had borrowed money from the South Sea Company upon stock actually transferred and pledged, at the time of borrowing, to or for the use of the Company, should be free from all demands upon payment of ten per cent. of the sums so borrowed. They had lent about £11,000,000 in this manner, at a time when prices were unnaturally raised; and they now received back £1,100,000, when prices had sunk to their ordinary level."
A volume (says another writer) might be collected of anecdotes connected with this fatal speculation. A tradesman at Bath, who had invested his only remaining fortune in this stock, finding it had fallen from 1,000 to 900, left Bath with an intention to sell out; on his arrival in London it had fallen to 250. He thought the price too low, sanguinely hoped that it would re-ascend, still deferred his purpose, and lost his all.
The Duke of Chandos had embarked £300,000 in this project; the Duke of Newcastle strongly advised his selling the whole, or at least a part, with as little delay as possible; but this salutary advice he delayed to take, confidently anticipating the gain of at least half a million, and through rejecting his friend's counsel, he lost the whole. Some were, however, more fortunate. The guardians of Sir Gregory Page Turner, then a minor, had purchased stock for him very low, and sold it out when it had reached its maximum, to the amount of £200,000. With this large sum Sir Gregory built a fine mansion at Blackheath, and purchased 300 acres of land for a park. Two maiden sisters, whose stock had accumulated to £90,000, sold out when the South Sea stock was at 790. The broker whom they employed advised them to re-invest in navy bills, which were at the time at a discount of twenty-five per cent.; they took his advice, and two years afterwards received their money at par.
Even the poets did not escape. Gay (says Dr. Johnson, in his "Lives of the Poets") had a present from young Craggs of some South Sea stock, and once supposed himself to be the master of £20,000. His friends, especially Arbuthnot, persuaded him to sell his share, but he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a hundred a year for life, "which," said Fenton, "will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day." This counsel was rejected; the profit and principal were both lost, and Gay sunk so low under the calamity that his life for a time became in danger.
Pope, always eager for money, was also dabbling in the scheme, but it is uncertain whether he made money or lost by it. Lady Mary Wortley Montague was a loser. When Sir Isaac Newton was asked when the bubble would break, he said, with all his calculations he had never learned to calculate the madness of the people.
Prior declared, "I am lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the waves and the madness of the people are justly put together. It is all wilder than St. Anthony's dream, and the bagatelle is more solid than anything that has been endeavoured here this year."
In the full heat of it, the Duchess of Ormond wrote to Swift: "The king adopts the South Sea, and calls it his beloved child; though perhaps, you may say, if he loves it no better than his son, it may not be saying much; but he loves it as much as he loves the Duchess of Kendal, and that is saying a good deal. I wish it may thrive, for some of my friends are deep in it. I wish you were too."
Swift, cold and stern, escaped the madness, and even denounced in the following verses the insanity that had seized the times:—
"There is a gulf where thousands fell,
Here all the bold adventurers came;
A narrow sound, though deep as hell—
Change Alley is the dreadful name.
"Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down;
Each paddling in his leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold and drown.
"Now buried in the depths below,
Now mounted up to heaven again,
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wit's end, like drunken men."