CAMEO Prince de Carignan (brother or nephew to Prince Eugéne) contrived to have the Exchange removed to the gardens of the Hôtel de Soissons, Explosion of where he erected six hundred little wooden booths, by which he gained Bubble. 300,000 livres for each of the few months that the madness continued. For the collapse came quickly on. In the September of this same 1720, which had begun with Law the object of universal adulation, a trifle would buy what nine months before was worth thousands ! 1720. Rage succeeded to disappointed hope, and of course fell upon Law. His carriage was broken to pieces in the street, and the President de Mesmes announced it in the Grand Chamber of Parliament by coming in, chanting solemnly "Messieurs, messieurs, grand nouvelle, La carosse de Law est réduit en cannelle." Up started all the counsellers, eagerly shouting, "Is Law torn to pieces ?" He had, however, reached the Palais Royal in safety; but when he went to the theatre with the Regent there was such an outcry that the Regent sent him off in secret in a carriage of the Duke of Bourbon's, and advised him to retire to one of his estates; but he was not safe there from arrest and vengeance. The Duke sent him passports, and he reached Brussels, whence he travelled to Venice, and by and by returned to London. His fourteen estates had been confiscated, and his latter years were passed in great poverty. He died at Venice in 1729, in his fifty-ninth year. This epigram was made on him— "Cy gît cet Écossais célèbre, Ce calculateur sans égal, He was one of the chief speculators on record, but even his worst enemies were forced to allow that he deceived himself as much as other people. It seems that he really believed that the fictitious value of paper would serve for currency as well as metals, and that besides, belonging to the cool Scotch nation, he had never calculated on the exaggerated frenzy of France and the unscrupulous worthlessness of the Government, which actually had shifted off fifteen thousand millions of their debt upon him. England, however, was by no means free from the infection of speculation. As early as 1711, Robert Harley, on coming into office as Lord Treasurer, on the fall of Godolphin, had found the floating debt of the nation amounted to ten millions. To provide means of paying interest of six per cent., he rendered permanent the duties upon wine, vinegar, tobacco, Indian goods, wrought silks and whale fins, and he proposed that the creditors should have the monopoly of the trade to the Spanish coasts of America, being formed into what was called the South Sea Company, and sanctioned by Royal charter. The plan was much admired and called Harley's masterpiece, but it was not till 1717 that the Company's first ship actually sailed. In 1719, it was proposed that all the annuities upon the National Debt should be bought up, and all the national securities placed in the hands of the purchaser. The directors of the Bank of England and the South Sea Company bid against each other, and the latter was the purchaser for seven and a half millions. Walpole had coolness and sense enough to oppose the Bill authorising the purchase; but it passed, by one hundred and seventy-two against fifty-five. In the peers, Lord Cowper compared the scheme to the Trojan horse, only bringing destruction. However, only seventeen peers voted against it. At once the directors opened a subscription, which soon reached two millions. Every one thought well of it. George I. called it his beloved child, and the shareholders were led to expect fifty per cent. It was said that Gibraltar and Port Mahon were to be exchanged for places in Peru, and landed estates were sold in the hope of large fortunes! All manner of schemes were hatched at the same time, as Walpole had feared. A Royal proclamation was issued forbidding them to be set on foot without legal authority, but there was no enforcing this, and the Prince of Wales actually appeared as governor of the Welsh Copper Company. He remained there till the company was in danger of prosecution, and then retired with a profit of £40,000! دو Change Alley was another Rue Quincampoix, though with this difference, that excepting the one great South Sea Company, the hosts of speculations were private ventures, but the jobbing in them was almost as eager, and some of the schemes even more ridiculous: "For making oil from sunflower seeds; for extracting silver from lead; for trading in human hair (for wigs); for fatting of hogs; for a wheel for perpetual motion; for importing of large jackasses from Spain,' which last seems unnecessary, when one company was "for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed." However, the South Sea Company, eager to absorb all the money in the market, obtained writs of scire facias against the managers of some of these absurd companies. It was a prick to their own huge bubble. Every one grew anxious and distrustful, and wanted to exchange their paper bonds for solid cash. No doubt what was passing in France in this very year, 1720, increased the panic. The same mistake had been made, though not to such a fatal extent, there was not gold enough to meet the demand. Stock, which had been going at 1000 in August, came down to 300 in September, and in November to 135! There was ruin and rage among the multitudinous dupes, and when Parliament met on the 8th of November there was no lack of furious invective. Lord Molesworth said the Roman punishment to a parricide was to be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the Tiber, and he would be willing to see the contrivers of the South Sea scheme undergo the like! CAMEO XXVI South Sea 1717. CAMEO Fall of the Scheme. 1721. Walpole, however, observed that if London were on fire, it would be better to put out the flames before hunting down the incendiaries, and that something must at once be done to restore public credit. However, the directors were called on to show up their accounts, and a Bill was brought in "against the infamous practice of stock-jobbing." Walpole's plan, though it passed the House, was not carried into effect; immediately after Christmas the directors were to be examined before a committee. They petitioned to be allowed counsel; but this was denied them, as it then was to felons at the bar. The cashier, after his first examination, escaped to France, carrying with him the register of the company. Connivance of some of the grandees concerned was suspected, and there was a furious scene in the committee room. Four Members of Parliament, who had been directors, were expelled from the House, declared incapable of sitting again, and soon after taken into custody, together with five other directors; but the punishment was an extremely difficult matter, since they had committed no statutable offence. The fury shown in the House of Peers was equal to, if not greater, than that in the Commons. Lord Stanhope, who had never meddled with any of the jobbery, and had merely permitted the scheme as a Minister, was especially attacked by the young Duke of Wharton, a man of great ability, but a profligate and an atheist, who was president of a society of lawless and wicked young men, called the Hell-fire Club. Of all men in the world he was one of the most unfit to declaim about public virtue, denounce a respectable and honest Minister, and compare him to Sejanus, the infamous favourite of Tiberius. It absolutely killed Lord Stanhope, who made a full vindication of himself, but whose anger brought a rush of blood to the head, of which the next day he died, a great shock alike to the King and country, where there never had been the least imputation on his honesty and uprightness. Lord Townshend became Secretary of State; Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was so much implicated that he had to resign, and Walpole took his place. The committee worked hard at the unravelling of the scheme, and when their first report appeared, it was found that in the last year more than a million of South Sea stock had been created, or rather invented for it had no existence, but the receivers would obtain any gains if the prices rose, losing nothing if it fell. This had been used for bribery to facilitate getting the Bill passed. The two favourite German ladies, who had been justly said to be come "for all our chattels," and their two nieces, had all had £10,000 of this apiece. The Earl of Sunderland had had £50,000, the two Craggses, father and son, one of whom was Postmaster-General, the other secretary, had each had their share, and so had Aislabie. The younger Craggs, an accomplished man and a friend of the poet Pope, died of small-pox while the report was being read, and his unhappy father soon after poisoned himself. Lord Somerset was acquitted as more of a dupe than a rogue, but he was obliged to resign, and Walpole became First Lord of the Treasury. Some of the principal directors, such as Sir John Blunt, had fled; but all were disabled from ever sitting in Parliament, and their property, amounting altogether to about two millions, was seized to compensate the sufferers-a pittance being allowed for their own maintenance. Of one, who had, in his foolish exaltation, said he could feed his horses on gold, it was said he might now feed on it himself, and should have just as much as he could eat, and no more. However, by a great effort of sagacity, Walpole succeeded in restoring public credit, and in returning thirty-three per cent. to the sufferers from the South Sea scheme, and the agitation and discontent gradually abated, although many families were irretrievably ruined. The passion for speculation was, however, by no means finally cured, and at times set in like a fever-not recognised as that which hastens to be rich and is not innocent." 66 CAMEO XXVI. Walbole's Ministry. 1721. CAMEO XXVII. Peter and the Patriarch. 1718. We must follow the erratic course of the two foreign heroes, Peter I. of Russia and Charles XII. of Sweden, though they mingled little more in English affairs. Peter had, indeed, an envoy in London named Matveof, who got into debt, and was imprisoned on the suit of his creditors. Queen Anne caused him to be released, but did not fulfil Peter's demands that the creditors should be severely punished or even put to death, though Lord Whitworth made ample apologies to the Czar. Peter's improvements were carried on with ardour, though they often jarred terribly on his people. When he built a palace at Voronetz on the Don, he adorned the portico with statues of Mars and of Venus. These were a grievous scandal to the people, and when Peter invited their Bishop to dinner, he received a refusal to come as long as the heathen statues were there. The good man then went to his cathedral, fully expecting to be imprisoned for his resistance; but, on coming out, he met a message that the Czar expected him to supper, and that the images were taken down. 66 The Patriarch of Moscow was almost a Pope, with undefined powers which sometimes interfered with those of the Czar, and Peter, on the first vacancy, made a 'guardian of the Patriarchal chair" to perform episcopal functions, appointed a Council for the administration of the Church, and, when petitioned to fill up the vacant chair, said, "Behold in me your Patriarch!” The strange wilful captivity of Charles XII. in Turkey had given every opportunity to his enemies, and was the ruin of poor Stanislas Lecksinski, who was driven out of Poland, came after Charles to Turkey, and was there kept prisoner. Prussia, Saxony, Denmark, all wanted—as well as Russia-to seize on his dominions. |