A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume I Part 9

[Sidenote: 1718-1719--The Mississippi Scheme]

One of the comedies of Ben Jonson gives some vivid and humorous ill.u.s.trations 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-sh.e.l.ls, and make gra.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on, the pa.s.sion 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, d.u.c.h.esses 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 compet.i.tors 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+on and intrigue, who delighted in scandalous entanglements with women. The fas.h.i.+on 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 coa.r.s.e 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 _litterateur_ 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, ma.s.sive, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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, surpa.s.s in senseless extravagance anything satirized by Ben Jonson. So wild was the pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sailed 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed]

The bill pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sent 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pet.i.tions 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. Pet.i.tions 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 trans.m.u.tation of silver into malleable fine metal; for buying and fitting out s.h.i.+ps 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 n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution 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 a.s.sociations, 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 quant.i.ty 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 fict.i.tious 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 pet.i.tions for redress and relief which were presented to the House of Commons. We find among them pet.i.tions from the counties of Hertford, Dorset, Ess.e.x, 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 a.s.sembled 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 a.s.sisted 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 princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nts 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 a.s.sured 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 cla.s.ses 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, pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle, and who lost no friend."

Epitaphs seem to have been genuine tributes of personal friends.h.i.+p 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 h.e.l.l-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 n.o.ble. 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 Vendome; an encounter of a different kind with another brilliant profligate robbed him of his life.

The House of Commons promptly pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 50,000 pounds of the capital stock of the South Sea Company was taken in by Robert Knight, late cas.h.i.+er 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 compa.s.sionate 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 ill.u.s.trates 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}

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER THE STORM.

[Sidenote: 1721--South Sea victims]

Swift wrote more than one poem on the South Sea mania. That which was written in 1721, and is called "South Sea," is a wonder of wit and wisdom. It shows the hollowness of the scheme in some new, odd, and striking light in every metaphor and every verse. "A guinea," Swift reminds his readers, "will not pa.s.s at market for a farthing more, shown through a multiplying gla.s.s, than what it always did before."

"So cast it in the Southern Seas, And view it through a jobber's bill, Put on what spectacles you please, Your guinea's but a guinea still."