their thoughts to private methods of trick and cheat, a modern way
of thieving every jot as criminal, and in some degree worse than the
other, by which honest men are gulled with fair pretences to part
from their money, and then left to take their course with the
author, who skulks behind the curtain of a protection, or in the
Mint or Friars, and bids defiance as well to honesty as the law.

Others, yet urged by the same necessity, turn their thoughts to
honest invention, founded upon the platform of ingenuity and
integrity.

These two last sorts are those we call projectors; and as there was
always more geese than swans, the number of the latter are very
inconsiderable in comparison of the former; and as the greater
number denominates the less, the just contempt we have of the former
sort bespatters the other, who, like cuckolds, bear the reproach of
other people's crimes.

A mere projector, then, is a contemptible thing, driven by his own
desperate fortune to such a strait that he must be delivered by a
miracle, or starve; and when he has beat his brains for some such
miracle in vain, he finds no remedy but to paint up some bauble or
other, as players make puppets talk big, to show like a strange
thing, and then cry it up for a new invention, gets a patent for it,
divides it into shares, and they must be sold. Ways and means are
not wanting to swell the new whim to a vast magnitude; thousands and
hundreds of thousands are the least of his discourse, and sometimes
millions, till the ambition of some honest coxcomb is wheedled to
part with his money for it, and then (nascitur ridiculus mus) the
adventurer is left to carry on the project, and the projector laughs