“It seemed at that time as if the whole nation had turned stock-jobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up by crowds, and Cornhill was impassable for the number of carriages. Everybody came to purchase stock. ‘Every fool aspired to be a knave.’ In the words of a ballad published at the time, and sung about the streets—
“‘Then stars and garters did appear Among the meaner rabble; To buy and sell, to see and hear The Jews and Gentiles squabble.
‘The greatest ladies thither came, And plied in chariots daily; Or pawned their jewels for a sum To venture in the Alley.’”
Not merely South Sea stock, but schemes of even a wilder nature now deluged the market. It would seem incredible, but it is vouched for on good authority, that one adventurer started “_A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is_,” and in one day sold a thousand shares, the deposit on which was £2 per share. He thought it prudent to decamp with the £2,000, and was no more heard of. Mackay publishes a list of eighty-six bubble companies, which were eventually declared illegal and abolished. But the South Sea Bubble was a Triton among these minnows, and the directors, having once tasted the profits of their scheme by the rapid rise of its shares, kept their emissaries at work. Nor indeed were they much needed, for every person interested in the stock endeavoured to draw a knot of listeners round him in ’Change Alley, or its purlieus, to whom he expatiated on the treasures of the South American Seas. Then came the rumour that Gibraltar was to be exchanged for certain places on the coast of Peru. Instead of paying a tribute to the King of Spain, the company would be able to trade freely, and send as many ships as they liked.
“Visions of ingots danced before their eyes,”
and the directors opened their books for a subscription of a million, and then for a second million, and the frantic speculators took it all. Swift described ’Change Alley as a gulf in the South Seas:—
“Subscribers here by thousands float, And jostle one another down, Each paddling in his leaky boat, And here they fish for gold and drown.
“Now buried in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wits’ end, like drunken men.