was put into the hands of men who had not yet discovered its dangers.
With the natural confusion which ensued between "credit" and "wealth,"
with a new emphasis upon the possible values inherent in "expectations
of wealth" rather than immediate control over money, an unheard-of
speculative emphasis appeared in business. The rapid increase in new
trades and new industrial systems afforded possibilities of immediate
rise to affluence. The outside public engaged in speculation to a degree
not before known. Exaggerated gains, violent fluctuations in prices,
meteoric rises and collapses--these gave rein to a gambling spirit
perennial in man. The word "Projects" enters into literature as a
recurrent motif, strangely familiar to our present generation, which
needs only to turn Defoe's _Essay on Projects_ into contemporary
language to see the similarities between the year 1697 and the year
1939. That essay is filled with talk of "new Inventions, Engines, and I
know not what, which have rais'd the Fancies of Credulous People to such
height, that merely 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."

Of the many speculative schemes of the early eighteenth century, none
is better known than the "South Sea Bubble." After a long period during
which English trade with the Spanish West Indies was carried on by
subterfuge, an Act of Parliament in 1710 incorporated into a joint-stock
company the state creditors, upon the basis of their loan of ten million
pounds to the Government and conferred upon them the monopoly of the
English trade with the Indies. In spite of these advantages, however,
the South Sea Company found itself so hampered and limited in credit
that it offered to convert the national debt into a "single redeemable