twelve at night, it soon spread over the city. Several persons illuminated
their houses in token of their joy. On the following day, when Mr.
Aislabie was conveyed to the Tower, the mob assembled on Tower-hill with
the intention of hooting and pelting him. Not succeeding in this, they
kindled a large bonfire, and danced around it in the exuberance of their
delight. Several bonfires were made in other places; London presented the
appearance of a holiday, and people congratulated one another as if they
had just escaped from some great calamity. The rage upon the acquittal of
Mr. Stanhope had grown to such a height that none could tell where it
would have ended, had Mr. Aislabie met with the like indulgence.
To increase the public satisfaction, Sir George Caswall, of the firm of
Turner, Caswall, and Co., was expelled from the House on the following
day, committed to the Tower, and ordered to refund the sum of 250,000l.
[Illustration: EARL OF SUNDERLAND.]
That part of the report of the Committee of Secrecy which related to the
Earl of Sunderland was next taken into consideration. Every effort was
made to clear his lordship from the imputation. As the case against him
rested chiefly on the evidence extorted from Sir John Blunt, great pains
were taken to make it appear that Sir John's word was not to be believed,
especially in a matter affecting the honour of a peer and privy
councillor. All the friends of the ministry rallied around the earl, it
being generally reported that a verdict of guilty against him would bring
a Tory ministry into power. He was eventually acquitted by a majority of
233 against 172; but the country was convinced of his guilt. The greatest
indignation was every where expressed, and menacing mobs again assembled
in London. Happily no disturbance took place.
This was the day on which Mr. Craggs the elder expired. The morrow had
been appointed for the consideration of his case. It was very generally
believed that he had poisoned himself. It appeared, however, that grief
for the loss of his son, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, who had
died five weeks previously of the small-pox, preyed much on his mind. For
this son, dearly beloved, he had been amassing vast heaps of riches: he
had been getting money, but not honestly; and he for whose sake he had
bartered his honour and sullied his fame was now no more. The dread of
further exposure increased his trouble of mind, and ultimately brought on
an apoplectic fit, in which he expired. He left a fortune of a million and
a half, which was afterwards confiscated for the benefit of the sufferers
by the unhappy delusion he had been so mainly instrumental in raising.
One by one the case of every director of the company was taken into
consideration. A sum amounting to two millions and fourteen thousand
pounds was confiscated from their estates towards repairing the mischief
they had done, each man being allowed a certain residue in proportion to
his conduct and circumstances, with which he might begin the world anew.
Sir John Blunt was only allowed 5,000l. out of his fortune of upwards of
183,000l.; Sir John Fellows was allowed 10,000l. out of 243,000l.; Sir
Theodore Janssen, 50,000l. out of 243,000l.; Mr. Edward Gibbon, 10,000l.
out of 106,000l.; Sir John Lambert, 5000l. out of 72,000l. Others, less
deeply involved, were treated with greater liberality. Gibbon, the
historian, whose grandfather was the Mr. Edward Gibbon so severely
mulcted, has given, in the _Memoirs of his Life and Writings_, an
interesting account of the proceedings in parliament at this time. He owns
that he is not an unprejudiced witness; but, as all the writers from which
it is possible to extract any notice of the proceedings of these
disastrous years were prejudiced on the other side, the statements of the
great historian become of additional value. If only on the principle _audi
alteram partem_, his opinion is entitled to consideration. "In the year
1716," he says, "my grandfather was elected one of the directors of the
South-Sea company, and his books exhibited the proof that before his
acceptance of that fatal office, he had acquired an independent fortune of
60,000l. But his fortune was overwhelmed in the shipwreck of the year
1720, and the labours of thirty years were blasted in a single day. Of the
use or abuse of the South-Sea scheme, of the guilt or innocence of my
grandfather and his brother directors, I am neither a competent nor a
disinterested judge. Yet the equity of modern times must condemn the
violent and arbitrary proceedings, which would have disgraced the cause of
justice, and rendered injustice still more odious. No sooner had the
nation awakened from its golden dream, than a popular and even a
parliamentary clamour demanded its victims; but it was acknowledged on all
sides, that the directors, however guilty, could not be touched by any
known laws of the land. The intemperate notions of Lord Molesworth were
not literally acted on; but a bill of pains and penalties was
introduced--a retro-active statute, to punish the offences which did not
exist at the time they were committed. The legislature restrained the
persons of the directors, imposed an exorbitant security for their
appearance, and marked their character with a previous note of ignominy.
They were compelled to deliver, upon oath, the strict value of their
estates, and were disabled from making any transfer or alienation of any
part of their property. Against a bill of pains and penalties, it is the
common right of every subject to be heard by his counsel at the bar. They
prayed to be heard. Their prayer was refused, and their oppressors, who
required no evidence, would listen to no defence. It had been at first
proposed, that one-eighth of their respective estates should be allowed
for the future support of the directors; but it was especially urged that,
in the various shades of opulence and guilt, such a proportion would be
too light for many, and for some might possibly be too heavy. The
character and conduct of each man were separately weighed; but, instead of
the calm solemnity of a judicial inquiry, the fortune and honour of
thirty-three Englishmen were made the topics of hasty conversation, the
sport of a lawless majority; and the basest member of the committee, by a
malicious word or a silent vote, might indulge his general spleen or
personal animosity. Injury was aggravated by insult, and insult was
embittered by pleasantry. Allowances of 20l. or 1s. were facetiously
moved. A vague report that a director had formerly been concerned in
another project, by which some unknown persons had lost their money, was
admitted as a proof of his actual guilt. One man was ruined because he had
dropped a foolish speech, that his horses should feed upon gold; another,
because he was grown so proud, that one day, at the Treasury, he had
refused a civil answer to persons much above him. All were condemned,
absent and unheard, in arbitrary fines and forfeitures, which swept away
the greatest part of their substance. Such bold oppression can scarcely be
shielded by the omnipotence of parliament. My grandfather could not expect
to be treated with more lenity than his companions. His Tory principles
and connexions rendered him obnoxious to the ruling powers. His name was
reported in a suspicious secret. His well-known abilities could not plead
the excuse of ignorance or error. In the first proceedings against the
South-Sea directors, Mr. Gibbon was one of the first taken into custody,
and in the final sentence the measure of his fine proclaimed him eminently
guilty. The total estimate, which he delivered on oath to the House of
Commons, amounted to 106,543l. 5s. 6d., exclusive of antecedent
settlements. Two different allowances of 15,000l. and of 10,000l. were
moved for Mr. Gibbon; but on the question being put, it was carried
without a division for the smaller sum. On these ruins, with the skill and
credit of which parliament had not been able to despoil him, my
grandfather, at a mature age, erected the edifice of a new fortune. The
labours of sixteen years were amply rewarded; and I have reason to believe
that the second structure was not much inferior to the first."
[Illustration: THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE.--CARICATURE BY HOGARTH.[26]]
[26] Emblematic print of the South-Sea Scheme. By W. Hogarth.
The next consideration of the legislature, 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 thirty-seven millions eight hundred
thousand pounds, of which the stock allotted to all the proprietors only
amounted to twenty-four millions five hundred thousand pounds. The
remainder of thirteen millions three hundred thousand pounds belonged to
the company in their corporate capacity, and was the profit they had made
by the national delusion. Upwards of eight millions of this were taken
from the company, and divided among the proprietors and subscribers
generally, making a dividend of about 33l. 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 eleven millions in this manner, at a time
when prices were unnaturally raised; and they now received back one
million one hundred thousand, when prices had sunk to their ordinary
level.
But it was a long time before public credit was thoroughly restored.
Enterprise, like Icarus, had soared too high, and melted the wax of her
wings; like Icarus, she had fallen into a sea, and learned, while
floundering in its waves, that her proper element was the solid ground.
She has never since attempted so high a flight.
In times of great commercial prosperity there has been a tendency to
over-speculation on several occasions since then. The success of one
project generally produces others of a similar kind. Popular imitativeness
will always, in a trading nation, seize hold of such successes, and drag a
community too anxious for profits into an abyss from which extrication is
difficult. Bubble companies, of a kind similar to those engendered by the
South-Sea project, lived their little day in the famous year of the panic,
1825. On that occasion, as in 1720, knavery gathered a rich harvest from
cupidity, but both suffered when the day of reckoning came. The schemes of
the year 1836 threatened, at one time, results as disastrous; but they
were happily averted before it was too late.[27]
[27] The South-Sea project remained until 1845 the greatest
example in British history of the infatuation of the people
for commercial gambling. The first edition of these volumes
was published some time before the outbreak of the Great
Railway Mania of that and the following year.
[Illustration: BUBBLERS' ARMS--DESPAIR--FROM A PRINT IN THE COLLECTION OF
E. HAWKINS, ESQ.]
[Illustration: CONRAD GESNER.]
THE TULIPOMANIA.
Quis furor, ô cives!--_Lucan_.
The tulip,--so named, it is said, from a Turkish word, signifying a
turban,--was introduced into western Europe about the middle of the
sixteenth century. Conrad Gesner, who claims the merit of having brought
it into repute,--little dreaming of the commotion it was shortly
afterwards to make in the world,--says that he first saw it in the year
1559, in a garden at Augsburg, belonging to the learned Counsellor
Herwart, a man very famous in his day for his collection of rare exotics.
The bulbs were sent to this gentleman by a friend at Constantinople, where
the flower had long been a favourite. In the course of ten or eleven years
after this period, tulips were much sought after by the wealthy,
especially in Holland and Germany. Rich people at Amsterdam sent for the
bulbs direct to Constantinople, and paid the most extravagant prices for
them. The first roots planted in England were brought from Vienna in 1600.
Until the year 1634 the tulip annually increased in reputation, until it
was deemed a proof of bad taste in any man of fortune to be without a
collection of them. Many learned men, including Pompeius de Angelis and
the celebrated Lipsius of Leyden, the author of the treatise "De
Constantia," were passionately fond of tulips. The rage for possessing
them soon caught the middle classes of society, and merchants and
shopkeepers, even of moderate means, began to vie with each other in the
rarity of these flowers and the preposterous prices they paid for them. A
trader at Harlaem was known to pay one-half of his fortune for a single
root, not with the design of selling it again at a profit, but to keep in
his own conservatory for the admiration of his acquaintance.
One would suppose that there must have been some great virtue in this
flower to have made it so valuable in the eyes of so prudent a people as
the Dutch; but it has neither the beauty nor the perfume of the
rose--hardly the beauty of the "sweet, sweet-pea;" neither is it as
enduring as either. Cowley, it is true, is loud in its praise. He says--
"The tulip next appeared, all over gay,
But wanton, full of pride, and full of play;
The world can't shew a dye but here has place;
Nay, by new mixtures, she can change her face;
Purple and gold are both beneath her care,
The richest needlework she loves to wear;
Her only study is to please the eye,
And to outshine the rest in finery."
This, though not very poetical, is the description of a poet. Beckmann, in
his _History of Inventions_, paints it with more fidelity, and in prose
more pleasing than Cowley's poetry. He says, "There are few plants which
acquire, through accident, weakness, or disease, so many variegations as
the tulip. When uncultivated, and in its natural state, it is almost of
one colour, has large leaves, and an extraordinarily long stem. When it
has been weakened by cultivation, it becomes more agreeable in the eyes of
the florist. The petals are then paler, smaller, and more diversified in
hue; and the leaves acquire a softer green colour. Thus this masterpiece
of culture, the more beautiful it turns, grows so much the weaker, so
that, with the greatest skill and most careful attention, it can scarcely
be transplanted, or even kept alive."
Many persons grow insensibly attached to that which gives them a great
deal of trouble, as a mother often loves her sick and ever-ailing child
better than her more healthy offspring. Upon the same principle we must
account for the unmerited encomia lavished upon these fragile blossoms. In
1634, the rage among the Dutch to possess them was so great that the
ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population, even
to its lowest dregs, embarked in the tulip trade. As the mania increased,
prices augmented, until, in the year 1635, many persons were known to
invest a fortune of 100,000 florins in the purchase of forty roots. It
then became necessary to sell them by their weight in _perits_, a small
weight less than a grain. A tulip of the species called _Admiral Liefken_,
weighing 400 _perits_, was worth 4400 florins; an _Admiral Van der Eyck_,
weighing 446 _perits_, was worth 1260 florins; a _Childer_ of 106 _perits_
was worth 1615 florins; a _Viceroy_ of 400 _perits_, 3000 florins, and,
most precious of all, a _Semper Augustus_, weighing 200 _perits_, was
thought to be very cheap at 5500 florins. The latter was much sought
after, and even an inferior bulb might command a price of 2000 florins. It
is related that, at one time, early in 1636, there were only two roots of
this description to be had in all Holland, and those not of the best. One
was in the possession of a dealer in Amsterdam, and the other in Harlaem.
So anxious were the speculators to obtain them, that one person offered
the fee-simple of twelve acres of building-ground for the Harlaem tulip.
That of Amsterdam was bought for 4600 florins, a new carriage, two grey
horses, and a complete suit of harness. Hunting, an industrious author of
that day, who wrote a folio volume of one thousand pages upon the
tulipomania, has preserved the folio wing list of the various articles,
and their value, which were delivered for one single root of the rare
species called the _Viceroy_:
florins.
Two lasts of wheat 448
Four lasts of rye 558
Four fat oxen 480
Eight fat swine 240
Twelve fat sheep 120
Two hogsheads of wine 70
Four tuns of beer 32
Two tuns of butter 192
One thousand lbs. of cheese 120
A complete bed 100
A suit of clothes 80
A silver drinking-cup 60
------
2500
People who had been absent from Holland, and whose chance it was to return
when this folly was at its maximum, were sometimes led into awkward
dilemmas by their ignorance. There is an amusing instance of the kind
related in Blainville's _Travels_. A wealthy merchant, who prided himself
not a little on his rare tulips, received upon one occasion a very
valuable consignment of merchandise from the Levant. Intelligence of its
arrival was brought him by a sailor, who presented himself for that
purpose at the counting-house, among bales of goods of every description.
The merchant, to reward him for his news, munificently made him a present
of a fine red herring for his breakfast. The sailor had, it appears, a
great partiality for onions, and seeing a bulb very like an onion lying
upon the counter of this liberal trader, and thinking it, no doubt, very
much out of its place among silks and velvets, he slily seized an
opportunity and slipped it into his pocket, as a relish for his herring.
He got clear off with his prize, and proceeded to the quay to eat his
breakfast. Hardly was his back turned when the merchant missed his
valuable _Semper Augustus_, worth three thousand florins, or about 280l.
sterling. The whole establishment was instantly in an uproar; search was
every where made for the precious root, but it was not to be found. Great
was the merchant's distress of mind. The search was renewed, but again
without success. At last some one thought of the sailor.
The unhappy merchant sprang into the street at the bare suggestion. His
alarmed household followed him. The sailor, simple soul! had not thought
of concealment. He was found quietly sitting on a coil of ropes,
masticating the last morsel of his "_onion_". Little did he dream that he
had been eating a breakfast whose cost might have regaled a whole ship's
crew for a twelvemonth; or, as the plundered merchant himself expressed
it, "might have sumptuously feasted the Prince of Orange and the whole
court of the Stadtholder." Anthony caused pearls to be dissolved in wine
to drink the health of Cleopatra; Sir Richard Whittington was as foolishly
magnificent in an entertainment to King Henry V.; and Sir Thomas Gresham
drank a diamond dissolved in wine to the health of Queen Elizabeth, when
she opened the Royal Exchange; but the breakfast of this roguish Dutchman
was as splendid as either. He had an advantage, too, over his wasteful
predecessors: _their_ gems did not improve the taste or the wholesomeness
of _their_ wine, while _his_ tulip was quite delicious with his red
herring. The most unfortunate part of the business for him was, that he
remained in prison for some months on a charge of felony preferred against
him by the merchant.
Another story is told of an English traveller, which is scarcely less
ludicrous. This gentleman, an amateur botanist, happened to see a
tulip-root lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman. Being ignorant
of its quality, he took out his penknife, and peeled off its coats, with
the view of making experiments upon it. When it was by this means reduced
to half its size, he cut it into two equal sections, making all the time
many learned remarks on the singular appearances of the unknown bulb.
Suddenly, the owner pounced upon him, and, with fury in his eyes, asked
him if he knew what he had been doing? "Peeling a most extraordinary
onion," replied the philosopher. "_Hundert tausend duyvel!_" said the
Duchman; "it's an _Admiral Van der Eyck_." "Thank you," replied the
traveller, taking out his note-book to make a memorandum of the same; "are
these admirals common in your country?" "Death and the devil!" said the
Dutchman, seizing the astonished man of science by the collar; "come
before the syndic, and you shall see." In spite of his remonstrances, the
traveller was led through the streets followed by a mob of persons. When
brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his
consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was
worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in
extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the
payment of this sum.
The demand for tulips of a rare species increased so much in the year
1636, that regular marts for their sale were established on the Stock
Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, Harlaem, Leyden, Alkmar, Hoorn, and
other towns. Symptoms of gambling now became, for the first time,
apparent. The stock-jobbers, ever on the alert for a new speculation,
dealt largely in tulips, making use of all the means they so well knew how
to employ, to cause fluctuations in prices. At first, as in all these
gambling mania, confidence was at its height, and every body gained. The
tulip-jobbers speculated in the rise and fall of the tulip stocks, and
made large profits by buying when prices fell, and selling out when they
rose. Many individuals grew suddenly rich. A golden bait hung temptingly
out before the people, and one after the other, they rushed to the
tulip-marts, like flies around a honey-pot. Every one imagined that the
passion for tulips would last for ever, and that the wealthy from every
part of the world would send to Holland, and pay whatever prices were
asked for them. The riches of Europe would be concentrated on the shores
of the Zuyder Zee, and poverty banished from the favoured clime of
Holland. Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, sea-men, footmen,
maid-servants, even chimney-sweeps and old clothes-women, dabbled in
tulips. People of all grades converted their property into cash, and
invested it in flowers. Houses and lands were offered for sale at
ruinously low prices, or assigned in payment of bargains made at the
tulip-mart. Foreigners became smitten with the same frenzy, and money
poured into Holland from all directions. The prices of the necessaries of
life rose again by degrees: houses and lands, horses and carriages, and
luxuries of every sort, rose in value with them, and for some months
Holland seemed the very antechamber of Plutus. The operations of the trade
became so extensive and so intricate, that it was found necessary to draw
up a code of laws for the guidance of the dealers. Notaries and clerks
were also appointed, who devoted themselves exclusively to the interests
of the trade. The designation of public notary was hardly known in some
towns, that of tulip-notary usurping its place. In the smaller towns,
where there was no exchange, the principal tavern was usually selected as
the "show-place," where high and low traded in tulips, and confirmed their
bargains over sumptuous entertainments. These dinners were sometimes
attended by two or three hundred persons, and large vases of tulips, in
full bloom, were placed at regular intervals upon the tables and
sideboards for their gratification during the repast.