A.D. 1689 
—1776. 
and bubble 
companies 
were 
formed 
PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
These violent fluctuations must have given great oppor- 
tunities to stockbrokers; and one of the reasons why the 
new finance was condemned was because of the stimulus 
it gave to this gambling spirit; it seemed to divert men 
from honest enterprise, and encouraged the wildest specu- 
lation’. In some cases, indeed, Government played for this 
gambling spirit; the great financial expedient, in the year 
before the Bank of England was floated, was a lottery; a 
sum of money was raised, on all of which interest was to 
be paid in the usual way, but every fortieth share was 
to be entitled in addition to an annuity of a larger or 
smaller amount lasting for life. This speculative element 
proved a great attraction, and it may have been the cheapest 
way of floating the loan, extravagant as the terms appear; 
but it was severely condemned at the time, because of the 
sountenance which Government gave to the gambling spirit. 
This spirit showed itself in its most startling fashion, in 
1720, when an extraordinary number of wild projects were 
floated?; and the shares of other undertakings were quoted 
at fancy prices. The public were not accurately informed 
as to the possible profits in various lines of trade. They 
formed the wildest estimates of the gain that might accrue 
from certain political concessions or from new industrial 
‘nventions. Of these schemes the most celebrated was the 
4.8 
1 Compare Sir John Barnard's speech during the debate on the Bill to prevent 
he “infamous practice’ of Stock-jobbing. Parl. Hust, 1x. 54. 
15 W.and M.c. 7, § 89. 
8 There had been many such schemes before. Defoe, writing in 1697, complains 
»f them bitterly. * There are and that too many, fair pretences of fine Discoveries, 
sew Inventions, Engines and I know not what, which being advanc’d in Notion, 
and talk’d up to great things to be perform’d when such and such sums of Money 
shall be advanc'd, and sach and such Engines are made, have rais'd the Fancies of 
Credulous People to such height, that meerly on the shadow of Expectation, they 
have form’d Companies, chose Committees, appointed Officers, Shares and Books, 
rais’d great Stocks, and cri’d up an empty Notion to that degree that People have 
been betray’d to part with their Money for Shares in a New-Nothing and when 
the Inventors have earri’d on the test till they have sold all their own Interest 
they leave the Cloud to vanish of itself, and the poor Purchasers to Quarrel with 
one another, and go to Law about Settlements, Transferrings, and some Bone or 
other thrown among ‘em by the Subtlety of the Author to lay the blame of the 
Miscarriage upon themselves....If I should name Linnen-Manufactures, Saltpeter- 
Works, Copper Mines, Diving Engines, Dipping and the like for instances of this 
= should I believe do no wrong to Truth.” Essay on Projects, pp. 11—13.