"THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES."
[Sidenote: 1718-1719--The Mississippi Scheme]
One of the comedies of Ben Jonson gives some vivid and humorous
illustrations of the mania for projects, speculations, patents, and
monopolies that at his time had taken possession of the minds of
Englishmen. There is an enterprising person who declares that he can
coin money out of cobwebs, raise wool upon egg-shells, and make grass
grow out of marrow-bones. He has a project "for the recovery of drowned
land," a scheme for a new patent for the dressing of dog-skins for
gloves, a plan for the bottling of ale, a device for making wine out of
blackberries, and various other schemes cut and dry for what would now be
called floating companies to make money. The civilized world is visited
with this epidemic of project and speculation from time to time. In the
reign of George the First such a mania attacked England much more
fiercely than it had done even in the days of Ben Jonson. It came to us
this time from France. The close of a great war is always a tempting and
a favorable time for such enterprises. Finances are out of order; a
season of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resources
are to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he is
when he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is
an air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, like
the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, the
enterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if only
human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been brought
into a condition of something very like {184} bankruptcy by the long and
wasting war; and a projector was found who promised to supply the
deficiency as boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in the
second part of "Faust." John Law, a Scotchman, and unquestionably a man
of great ability and financial skill, had settled in France in
consequence of having fought a duel and killed his man in his own
country. [Sidenote: 1710-1720--The South Sea Company] Law set up a
company which was to have a monopoly of the trade of the whole
Mississippi region in North America, and on condition of the monopoly was
to pay off the national debt of France. A scheme of the kind within due
limitations would have been reasonable enough, so far as the working of
the Mississippi region was concerned; but Law went on extending and
extending the scope of its supposed operations, until it might almost as
well have attempted to fold in the orb of the earth. The shares in his
company went up with a sudden bound. He had the patronage of the Regent
and of all the Court circle. Gambling in shares became the fashion, the
passion of Paris, and, indeed, of all France. Shares bought one day were
sold at an immense advance the next, or even the same day. Men and women
nearly bankrupt in purse before, suddenly found themselves in possession
of large sums of money, for which they had to all appearance run no risk
and made no sacrifice whatever. Princes and tradesmen, duchesses and
seamstresses and harlots, clamored, intrigued, and battled for shares.
The offices in the Rue Quincampoix, a street then inhabited by bankers,
stock-brokers, and exchange agents, were besieged all day long with
crowds of eager competitors for shares. The street was choked with fine
equipages, until it was found absolutely necessary to close it against
all horses and carriages. All the rank and fashion of Paris flung itself
into this game of speculation. Every one has heard the story of the
hunchback who made a little fortune by the letting of his hump as a desk
on which impatient speculators might scribble their applications for
shares. A French novelist, M. Paul Feval, has made good use of {185}
this story, and London still remembers to what a brilliant dramatic
account it was turned by Mr. Fechter. Law was the most powerful and the
most courted man of his day. In his youth he had been a gallant and a
free liver, a man of dress and fashion and intrigue, who delighted in
scandalous entanglements with women. The fashion and beauty of Paris was
for the hour at his feet. Think of a brilliant gallant who could make
one rich in a moment! The mother of the Regent described in a coarse and
pungent sentence the sort of homage which Parisian ladies would have been
willing to pay to Law if he had so desired. St. Simon, the mere
_littérateur_ and diplomatist, kept his head almost alone, and was not to
be dazzled. Since the fable of Midas, he said, he had not heard of any
one having the power to turn all he touched into gold, and he did not
believe that virtue was given to M. Law. There is no doubt that Law was
a man of great ability as a financier, and that his scheme in the
beginning had promise in it. It was, as Burke has said of the scheme and
its author, the public enthusiasm, and not Law himself, which chose to
build on the base of his scheme a structure which it could not bear. It
does not seem by any means certain that a project quite as wild might not
be launched in London or Paris at the present day, and find almost as
great a temporary success, and blaze, like Law's, the comet of a season.
While the season lasted the comet blazed with a light that filled the
social sky.
Law was for the time the most powerful man in France. A momentary
whisper that he was out of health sent the funds down, and eclipsed the
gayety of nations. He was admitted into the Regent's privy council, and
made Controller-general of the finances of France. The result was
inevitable; there was as yet nothing behind the promises and the shares
of the Mississippi Company. If finance could have gone on forever
promise-crammed, things would have been all right. But you cannot feed
capons so, as Hamlet tells us; and you cannot long feed {186}
shareholders so. Law's scheme suddenly collapsed one day, and brought
ruin on hundreds of thousands in France. While, however, it was still
afloat in air, its gaudy colors dazzled the eyes of the South Sea Company
in England.
[Sidenote: 1710-1720--The bubble swells]
At the north-west end of Threadneedle Street, within view of the remains
of Richard the Third's Palace of Crosby, stands a solid red-brick
building, substantial, respectable, business-like, dignified with the
dignity of some century and a half of existence. Time has softened and
deepened its ruddy hue to a mellow, rich tone, contrasting pleasantly
with the white copings and facings of its windows, and suggesting
agreeably something of the smooth brown cloth and neat white linen of a
well-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive,
prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the most
gigantic shams on record--a sham and swindle that was the prolific parent
of a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honesty
and credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, is
all that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place--the
Hall of the Kings at Karnak is hardly more melancholy or more
ghost-haunted. Not that the house has now that "desolation something
like Balclutha's" which Charles Lamb attributed to it more than half a
century ago. The place has changed greatly since Elia the Italian and
Elia the Englishman were fellow-clerks at the South Sea House. Those
dusty maps of Mexico, "dim as dreams," have long been taken away. The
company itself, having outlived alike its fame and its infamy, lingering
inappropriately like some guest that "hath outstayed his welcome time,"
was wound up at last within the memory of living men. The stately
gate-way no longer opens upon the "grave court, with cloisters and
pillars," where South Sea stock so often changed hands. The cloisters
and pillars have gone; the court has been converted into a hall of a sort
of exchange, where merchants daily meet. The days of the desolation of
the South Sea House are as much a thing of its past as {187} its earlier
splendor. Its corridors are now crowded with offices occupied by
merchants of every nationality, from Scotland to Greece, and by companies
connected with every portion of the globe. Only at night, on Saturday
afternoons, and during the still peace of a City Sabbath, do the noise of
men and the stir of business cease in the South Sea House. Yet,
nevertheless, when one thinks of all that has happened there, of the
dreams and hopes and miseries of which it was the begetter, it remains
one of the most melancholy temples to folly that man has yet erected.
The South Sea Company had been established in 1710 by Harley himself, and
was going along quietly and soberly enough for the time; but the example
of the Mississippi Company was too strong for it. The South Sea Company,
too, made to itself waxen wings, and prepared to fly above the clouds.
The directors offered to relieve the State of its debt on condition of
obtaining a monopoly of the South Sea trade. The nation was to take
shares in the company in the first instance, and to deal with the
company, for its commercial and other wares, in the second; and by means
of the exclusive dealing in shares and in products it was to pay off the
National Debt. In other words, three men, all having nothing, and
heavily in debt, were to go into exclusive dealings with each other, and
were thus to make fortunes, discharge their liabilities, and live in
luxury for the rest of their days. Stated thus, the proposition looks
marvellously absurd. But it is not, in its essential conditions, more
absurd than many a financial project which floats successfully for a
time. Money-making, the hardest and most practical of all occupations,
the task which can soonest be tested by results, is the business of all
others in which men are most easily led astray, most greedy to be led
astray. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain French lady whose whole nature
cried out for her seduction. There are seasons when the whole nature of
man seems to cry out for his financial seduction. The South Sea project
expanded and inflated as the {188} Mississippi Scheme had done. Its
temporary success turned the heads of the whole population.
[Sidenote: 1720--The bank competes]
Hundreds of schemes, still more wild, sprang into sudden existence. Some
of the projects then put forward, and believed in, surpass in senseless
extravagance anything satirized by Ben Jonson. So wild was the passion
for new enterprises, that it seemed as if, at one time, anybody had only
to announce any scheme, however preposterous, in order to find people
competing for shares in it. The only condition of things in our own time
that could be compared with this epoch of insane speculation is the
railway mania of 1846, when, for a brief season, George Hudson was king,
and set up his hat in the market-place, and all England bowed down in
homage to it. But the epidemic of speculation in the reign of the
railway king was comparatively harmless and reasonable when compared with
the midsummer madness of the South Sea scheme.
The South Sea scheme was brought before the notice of the House of
Commons in 1720. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Mr. Aislabie. We
have already seen Mr. Aislabie as one of the secret committee who
recommended the impeachment of Oxford and Bolingbroke. How well he was
fitted for his office will appear from the fact that he was altogether
taken in by the project, and by the financial arguments of those who
brought it forward. Sunderland and Stanhope were taken in likewise--but
there was nothing very surprising in that. A statesman of those days did
not profess to understand anything about finance or economics, unless
these subjects happened to belong to his department; and the statesman
was exceptional who could honestly profess to understand them even when
they did. Walpole, however, was a minister of a different order. He was
the first of the line of statesmen-financiers. He saw through the
bubble, and endeavored to make others see as clearly as he did himself.
Walpole assailed the project in a pamphlet, and opposed it strenuously in
his place in Parliament. He was {189} not at that time a minister of the
Crown; perhaps, if he had been, the South Sea Bill might never have been
presented to Parliament; but the nation and the Parliament were off their
heads just then. The caricaturists and the authors of lampoon verses
positively found out the South Sea scheme before the financiers and men
of the city.
On January 22, 1720, the House of Commons, sitting in what was then
termed a Grand Committee, or what would now be called Committee of the
whole House, took into consideration a proposal of the South Sea Company
towards the redemption of the public debts. The proposal set forth that,
"the Corporation of the Governor and Company of Merchants of Great
Britain, trading to the South Sea and other parts of America, and for
encouraging the fishery, having under their consideration how they may be
most serviceable to his Majesty and his Government, and to show their
zeal and readiness to concur in the great and honorable design of
reducing the national debts," do "humbly apprehend that if the public
debts and annuities mentioned in the annexed estimate were taken into and
made part of the capital stock of the said Company, it would greatly
contribute to that most desirable end." The Company then set forth the
conditions under which they proposed to convert themselves into an agency
for paying off the national debt, and making a profit for themselves.
The proposal fell somewhat short of the general expectation, which looked
for nothing less than a sort of financial philosopher's stone. Besides,
the Bank of England was willing to compete with the South Sea Company.
If the Company could coin money out of cobwebs, why should not the Bank
be able to accomplish the same feat? The friends of the Bank reminded
the House of Commons of the great services which that corporation had
rendered to the Government in the most difficult times, and urged, with
much show of justice, that if any advantage was to be made by public
bargains, the Bank should be preferred before a Company that had never
{190} done anything for the nation. Well might Aislabie, the unfortunate
Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose shame and ruin we shall soon come to
tell of, exclaim in the speech which he made when defending himself for
the second time before the House of Lords, that "the spirit of bubbling
had prevailed so universally that the very Bank became a bubble--and this
not by chance or necessity, or from any engagement to raise money for the
public service, but from the same spirit that actuated Temple Mills or
Caraway's Fishery." In plain truth, as poor Aislabie pointed out, the
Bank started a scheme in imitation of the South Sea Company, and the
House of Commons gave time for its proper development. The Bank offered
its scheme on February 1st, and by that time the South Sea Company had
seen their way to mend their hand and submit more attractive proposals.
Then the Bank, not to be out-rivalled, soon made a second proposal as
well. The House took the rival propositions into consideration. Walpole
was the chief advocate of the Bank. No doubt he had come to the
reasonable conclusion that if there could be any hope of success for such
a scheme, it would be found in the Bank of England rather than in the
South Sea Company. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made
himself the champion of the Company, and assured the House that its
propositions were of far greater advantage to the country than those of
the Bank. Under his persuasive influence the House agreed to accept the
tender, as we may call it, of the Company, and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Craggs, and others, were ordered to prepare and
bring in a bill to give legislative sanction to the scheme.
[Sidenote: 1720--The Bill passed]
The bill passed the Commons and went up to the House of Lords. To the
credit of the Peers it has to be said that they received it more
doubtfully, and were slower to admit the certainty of its blessings than
the members of the representative chamber had been. Lord North and Gray
condemned it as not only making way for, but {191} actually countenancing
and authorizing "the fraudulent and pernicious practice of
stock-jobbing." The Duke of Wharton declared that "the artificial and
prodigious rise of the South Sea stock was a dangerous bait, which might
decoy many unwary people to their ruin, and allure them, by a false
prospect of gain, to part with what they had got by their labor and
industry to purchase imaginary riches." Lord Cowper said that the bill,
"like the Trojan horse, was ushered in and received with great pomp and
acclamations of joy, but was contrived for treachery and destruction."
Lord Sunderland, however, spoke warmly in favor of the bill, and
contended that "they who countenanced the scheme of the South Sea Company
had nothing in their view but the easing the nation of part of that heavy
load of debt it labored under;" and argued that the scheme would enable
the directors of the Company at once to pay off the debt, and to secure
large dividends to their share-holders. The Lords decided on admitting
the South Sea Company's Trojan horse. Eighty-three votes were in favor
of the bill, and only seventeen against it. The bill was read a third
time on April 7th, and received the Royal assent on June 11th. The
King's speech, delivered that day at the close of the session, declared
that "the good foundation you have prepared this session for the payment
of the national debts, and the discharge of a great part of them without
the least violation of the public faith, will, I hope, strengthen more
and more the union I desire to see among all my subjects, and make our
friendship yet more valuable to all foreign Powers."
The immediate result of the Parliamentary authority thus given to what
was purely a bubble scheme was to bring upon the Legislature a perfect
deluge of petitions from all manner of projectors. Patents and
monopolies were sought for the carrying on of fisheries in Greenland and
various other regions; for the growth, manufacture and sale of hemp,
flax, and cotton; for the making of sail-cloth; for a general insurance
against fire; for the {192} planting and rearing of madder to be used by
dyers; for the preparing and curing of Virginia tobacco for snuff, and
making it into the same within all his Majesty's dominions. Schemes such
as these were comparatively reasonable; but there were others of a
different kind. Petitions were gravely submitted to Parliament praying
for patents to be granted to the projectors of enterprises for trading in
hair; for the universal supply of funerals to all parts of Great Britain;
for insuring and increasing children's fortunes; for insuring masters and
mistresses against losses from the carelessness or misconduct of
servants; for insuring against thefts and robberies; for extracting
silver from lead; for the transmutation of silver into malleable fine
metal; for buying and fitting out ships to suppress pirates; for a wheel
for perpetual motion, and--with which project, perhaps, we may close our
list of specimens--"for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage,
but nobody to know what it is." Of course some of these projects were
mere vulgar swindles. Even in that season of marvellous projection it is
not to be supposed that the inventors of the last-mentioned scheme had
any serious belief in its efficacy. The author of the project for the
perpetual-motion wheel was, we take it, a sincere personage and
enthusiast. His scheme has been coming up again and again before the
world since his time; and we have known good men who would have staked
all they held dear in life upon the possibility of its realization. But
the would-be patentee of the undertaking of great advantage, nobody to
know what it is, was a man of a different order. He understood human
nature in certain of its moods. He knew that there are men and women who
can be got to believe in anything which holds out the promise of quick
and easy gain. If he found a few dozen greedy and selfish fools to help
his project with a little money, that would, no doubt, be the full
attainment of his ends. Probably he was successful. The very boldness
of his avowal of secrecy would have a charm for many. One day would be
enough for him--the {193} the day when he sent in his demand for a
patent. The bare demand would bring him dupes.
[Sidenote: 1720--The bubble bursts]
The first great blow struck at the South Sea Company came from the South
Sea Company itself. Several bubble companies began to imitate the
financial system which the more favored institution had set up. The
South Sea Company put in motion certain legal proceedings against some of
the offenders. The South Sea Company had the support and countenance of
the high legal authorities, and found no difficulty in obtaining
injunctions against the other associations, directing them not to go
beyond the strict legal privileges secured to them by their charters of
incorporation. Among the undertakings thus admonished were the English
Copper Company and the Welsh Copper and Lead Company. His Royal Highness
the Prince of Wales happened to be a governor of the English Copper
Company, and the Lords-justices were polite enough to send the Prince a
message expressing the great regret they felt at having to declare
illegal an enterprise with which he was connected. The Prince, not to be
outdone in politeness, received the admonition, we are told, "very
graciously," and sent on his part a message to the Company requesting
them to accept his resignation, and to elect some one else a governor in
his place. The proceedings which the South Sea Company had set on foot
against their audacious rivals and imitators had, however, the
inconvenient effect of directing too much of public attention to the
principles upon which they conducted their own business. Confidence
began to waver, to be shaken, to give way altogether; and when people ask
whether a speculation is a bubble, the bubble, if it is one, is already
burst.
The whole basis of Law's system, and of the South Sea Company's schemes
as well, was the principle that the prosperity of a nation is increased
in proportion to the quantity of money in circulation; and that as no
State can have gold enough for all its commercial transactions,
paper-money may be issued to an unlimited extent, and {194} its full
value maintained without its being convertible at pleasure into hard
cash. This supposed principle has been proved again and again to be a
mere fallacy and paradox; but it always finds enthusiastic believers who
have plausible arguments in its support. It appears, indeed, to have a
singular fascination for some persons in all times and communities. It
might seem an obvious truism that under no possible conditions can people
in general be got to give as much for a promise to pay as for a certain
and instant payment; and yet this truism would have to be proved a
falsehood in order to establish a basis for such a project as that of
Law. Even were the basis to be established, the project would then have
to be worked fairly and honestly out, which was not done either in the
case of the Mississippi Company or of the South Sea Company. If each had
been founded on a true financial principle, each was worked in a false
and fraudulent way. At its best the South Sea Company in its later
development would have been a bubble. Worked as it actually was, it
proved to be a swindle. A committee of secrecy was appointed by the
House of Commons to inquire into the condition of the Company. The
committee found that false and fictitious entries had been made in the
Company's books; that leaves had been torn out; that some books had been
destroyed altogether, and that others had been carried off and secreted.
The vulgar arts of the card-sharper and the thimble-rigger had been
prodigally employed to avert detection and ruin by the directors of a
Company which was promoted and protected by ministers of State and by the
favorites of the King.
[Sidenote: 1720--Houghton]
Some idea of the wide-spread nature of the disaster which was inflicted
by the wreck of the Company may be formed from a rapid glance at some of
the petitions for redress and relief which were presented to the House of
Commons. We find among them petitions from the counties of Hertford,
Dorset, Essex, Buckingham, Derby; the cities of Bristol, Exeter, Lincoln;
the boroughs of Oakhampton, Amersham, Bedford, Chipping Wycombe, {195}
Abingdon, Sudbury, East Retford, Evesham, Newark-upon-Trent, Newbury, and
many other places. We have purposely omitted to take account of any of
the London communities. The wildest excitement prevailed; and it is
characteristic of the time to note that the national calamity--for it was
no less--aroused fresh hopes in the minds of the Jacobites. Such a
calamity, such a scandal, it was thought, could not but bring shame and
ruin upon the Whig ministers, and through them discredit on the Sovereign
and the Court. It was believed, it was hoped, that Sunderland would be
found to be implicated in the swindle. Why should not such a crisis,
such a humiliation to the Whigs, be the occasion of a new and a more
successful attempt on the part of the Jacobites? The King was again in
Hanover. He was summoned home in hot haste. On December 8, 1720, the
two Houses of Parliament were assembled to hear the reading of the Royal
speech proroguing the session; and in the speech the King was made to
express his concern "for the unhappy turn of affairs which has so much
affected the public credit at home," and to recommend most earnestly to
the House of Commons "that you consider of the most effectual and speedy
methods to restore the national credit, and fix it upon a lasting
foundation." "You will, I doubt not," the speech went on to say, "be
assisted in so commendable and necessary a work by every man that loves
his country." A week or so before the Royal speech was read, on November
30, 1720, Charles Edward, eldest son of James Stuart, was born at Rome.
The undaunted mettle of Atterbury came into fresh and vigorous activity
with the birth of the Stuart heir, and the apparently imminent ruin of
the Whig ministers.
Robert Walpole had been spending some time peacefully at his country
place, Houghton, in Norfolk. Hunting, bull-baiting, and drinking were
the principal amusements with which Walpole entertained his guests there.
Sometimes the guests were persons of royal rank (Walpole once entertained
the Grand Duke of Tuscany); {196} sometimes the throng of his visitors
and his neighbors to the hunting-field could only be compared, says a
letter written at the time, to an army in its march. Walpole never lost
sight, however, of what was going on in the metropolis. He used to send
a trusty Norfolk man as his express-messenger to run all the way on foot
from Houghton to London, and carry letters for him to confidential
friends, and bring him back the answers. When he found how badly things
were going in London on the bursting of the South Sea bubble, he hastened
up to town. His presence was sadly needed there. It is not without
interest to think of James Stuart in Rome, and Walpole in Houghton, both
keeping their eyes fixed on the gradual exposure of the South Sea
swindle, and both alike hoping to find their account in the national
calamity. All the advantage was with the statesman and not with the
Prince. The English people of all opinions and creeds were tolerably
well assured that if any one could help them out of the difficulty
Walpole could; and it required the faith of the most devoted Jacobite to
make any man of business believe that the return of the exiled Stuarts
could do much to keep off national bankruptcy. Walpole had waited long.
His time was now come at last.
[Sidenote: 1720--The Craggses]
Walpole had kept his head cool during the days when the Company was
soaring to the skies; he kept his head equally cool when it came down
with a crash. "He had never," he said in the House of Commons, "approved
of the South Sea scheme, and was sensible it had done a great deal of
mischief; but, since it could not be undone, he thought it the duty of
all good men to give their helping hand towards retrieving it; and with
this view he had already bestowed some thoughts on a proposal to restore
public credit, which at the proper time he would submit to the wisdom of
the House." Walpole had made money by the South Sea scheme. The sound
knowledge of the principles of finance, which enabled him to see that the
enterprise thus conducted could not pay, in the end {197} enabled him
also to see that it could pay up to a certain point; and when that point
had been reached he quietly sold out and saved his gains. The King's
mistresses and their relatives also made good profit out of the
transactions. The Prince of Wales was a gainer by some of the season's
speculations. But when the crash came, the ruin was wide-spread; it
amounted to the proportions of a national calamity. The ruling classes
raged and stormed against the vile conspirators who had disappointed them
in their expectations of coining money out of cobwebs. The Lords and
Commons held inquiries, passed resolutions, demanded impeachments. It
was soon made manifest beyond all doubt that members of the Government
had been scandalously implicated in the worst parts of the fraudulent
speculations. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was only
too clearly shown to be one of the leading delinquents. Mr. Craggs, the
father, Postmaster-general, and James Craggs, the son, Secretary of
State, were likewise involved. Both were remarkable men. The father had
begun life as a common barber, and partly by capacity and partly by the
thrift that follows fawning, had made his way up in the world until he
reached the height from which he was suddenly and so ignominiously to
fall. It was hardly worth the trouble thus to toil and push and climb,
only to tumble down with such shame and ruin. Craggs the father had had
great transfers of South Sea stock made to him for which he never paid.
Craggs the son, the Secretary of State, had acted as the go-between in
the transactions of the Company with the King's mistresses, whereby the
influence of these ladies was purchased for a handsome consideration.
Charles Stanhope, one of the Secretaries to the Treasury and cousin of
the Minister, was shown to have received large value in the stock of the
Company for which he never paid. The most ghastly ruin fell on some of
these men. Craggs the younger died suddenly on the very day when the
report incriminating him was read in the House of Commons. Craggs the
father poisoned himself a few {198} days afterwards. Pope wrote an
epitaph on the son, in which he described him as--
"Statesman, yet friend of truth; of soul sincere,
In action faithful and in honor clear;
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend."
Epitaphs seem to have been genuine tributes of personal friendship in
those days; they had no reference to merit or to truth. One's friend had
every virtue because he was one's friend. Secret committees might
condemn, Parliament might degrade, juries might convict, impartial
history might stigmatize, but one's friend remained one's friend all the
same; and if one had the gift of verse, was to be held up to the
admiration of time and eternity in a glorifying epitaph. We have fallen
on more prosaic days now; the living admirer of a modern Craggs would
leave his epitaph unwritten if he could not make facts and feelings fit
better in together.
[Sidenote: 1721--Death of Stanhope]
A better and more eminent man than Aislabie or either Craggs lost his
life in consequence of the South Sea calamity. No one had accused, or
even suspected, Lord Stanhope of any share in the financial swindle.
Even the fact that his cousin was one of those accused of guilty
complicity with it did not induce any one to believe that the Minister of
State had any share in the guilt. Yet Stanhope was one of the first
victims of the crisis. The Duke of Wharton, son of the late Minister,
had just come of age. He was already renowned as a brilliant, audacious
profligate. He was president of the Hell-fire Club; he and some of his
comrades were the nightly terror of London streets. Wharton thought fit
to make himself the champion of public purity in the debates on the South
Sea Company's ruin. He attacked the Ministers fiercely; he attacked
Stanhope in especial. Stanhope replied to him with far greater warmth
than the weight of any attack from Wharton would seem to have called for.
Excited beyond measure, Stanhope burst a blood-vessel in his {199} anger.
He was carried home, and he died the next day--February 5, 1721. His
life had been pure and noble. He was a sincere lover of his country; a
brave and often a successful soldier; a statesman of high purpose if not
of the most commanding talents. His career as a soldier was brought to a
close when he had to capitulate to that master of war and profligacy, the
Duke de Vendôme; an encounter of a different kind with another brilliant
profligate robbed him of his life.
The House of Commons promptly passed a series of resolutions declaring
"John Aislabie, Esquire, a Member of this House, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer and one of the Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury," guilty
of "most notorious, dangerous, and infamous corruption," and ordering his
expulsion from the House and his committal as a prisoner to the Tower.
This resolution was carried without a dissentient word. The House of
Commons went on next to consider that part of the report which applied to
Lord Sunderland, and a motion was made declaring that "after the
proposals of the South Sea Company were accepted by this House, and a
bill ordered to be brought in thereupon, and before such bill passed,
50,000 pounds of the capital stock of the South Sea Company was taken in
by Robert Knight, late cashier of the said Company, for the use and upon
the account of diaries, Earl of Sunderland, a Lord of Parliament and
First Commissioner of the Treasury, without any valuable consideration
paid, or sufficient security given, for payment for or acceptance of the
same."
Sunderland had too many friends, however, and too much influence to be
dealt with as if he were Aislabie. A fierce debate sprang up. The
evidence against him was not by any means so clear as in the case of
Aislabie. There was room for a doubt as to Sunderland's personal
knowledge of all that had been done in his name. His influence and power
secured him the full benefit of the doubt. The motion implicating him
was rejected by a majority of 233 votes against 172, "which, however,"
{200} says a contemporary account, "occasioned various reasonings and
reflections." Charles Stanhope, too, was lucky enough to get off, on a
division, by a very narrow majority.
[Sidenote: 1721--An interview with James Stuart]
A letter from an English traveller at Rome to his father, bearing date
May 6, 1721, and privately printed this year (1884) for the first time,
under the auspices of the Clarendon Society of Edinburgh, gives an
interesting account of the reception of the writer, an English
Protestant, by James Stuart and his wife. That part of the letter which
is of present interest to us tells of the remarks made by James on the
subject of the South Sea catastrophe. James spoke of the investigations
of the secret committee, from which he had no great hopes; for, he said,
the authors of the calamity "would find means to be above the common
course of justice." "Some may imagine," continued he, "that these
calamities are not displeasing to me, because they may in some measure
turn to my advantage. I renounce all such unworthy thoughts. The love
of my country is the first principle of my worldly wishes, and my heart
bleeds to see so brave and honest a people distressed and misled by a few
wicked men, and plunged into miseries almost irretrievable."
"Thereupon," says the writer of the letter, "he rose briskly from his
chair, and expressed his concern with fire in his eyes."
Exiled sovereigns are in the habit of expressing concern for their
country with fire in their eyes; they are also in the habit of regarding
their own return to power as the one sole means of relieving the country
from its distress. The English gentleman who describes this scene
represents himself as not to be outdone in patriotism of his own even by
the exiled Prince. "I could not disavow much of what he said; yet I own
I was piqued at it, for very often compassionate terms from the mouth of
an adverse party are grating. It appeared to me so on this occasion;
therefore I replied, 'It's true, sir, that our affairs in England lie at
present under many hardships by the South Sea's mismanagement; but it is
a constant {201} maxim with us Protestants to undergo a great deal for
the security of our religion, which we could not depend upon under a
Romish Government.'" This speech, not over-polite, the Prince took in
good part, and entered upon an argument so skilfully, "that I am
apprehensive I should become half a Jacobite if I should continue
following these discourses any longer." "Therefore," says the writer, "I
will give you my word I will enter no more upon arguments of this kind
with him." The Prince and his visitor were perhaps both playing a part
to some extent, and the whole discourse was probably a good deal less
theatric in style than the English traveller has reported. But there can
be no doubt that the letter fairly illustrates the spirit in which the
leading Jacobites watched over the financial troubles in England, and the
new hopes with which they were inspired--hopes destined to be translated
into new action before very long. Nor can it be denied that the speech
of the English visitor correctly represented the feeling which was
growing stronger day after day in the minds of prudent people at home in
England. The time was coming--had almost come--when a political
disturbance or a financial panic in these kingdoms was to be accounted
sufficient occasion for a change of Ministers, but not for a revolution.
{202}