Company, which could not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring
busses out of the Northern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company, which
promised to furnish leather superior to the best that was brought
from Turkey or Russia. There was a society which undertook the
office of giving gentlemen a liberal education on low terms, and
which assumed the sounding name of the Royal Academies Company. In a
pompous advertisement it was announced that the directors of the
Royal Academies Company had engaged the best masters in every branch
of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty thousand tickets at
twenty shillings each. There was to be a lottery--two thousand prizes
were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of the prizes were to be
taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French,
Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry, japaning,
fortification, bookkeeping, and the art of playing the theorbo.'

The panic was forgotten till Lord Macaulay revived the memory of it.
But, in fact, in the South Sea Bubble, which has always been
remembered, the form was the same, only a little more extravagant;
the companies in that mania were for objects such as these:--' "Wrecks
to be fished for on the Irish Coast--Insurance of Horses and other
Cattle (two millions)--Insurance of Losses by Servants--To make Salt
Water Fresh--For building of Hospitals for Bastard Children--For
building of Ships against Pirates--For making of Oil from Sun-flower
Seeds--For improving of Malt Liquors--For recovery of Seamen's Wages--For
extracting of Silver from Lead--For the transmuting of Quicksilver
into a malleable and fine Metal--For making of Iron with Pit-coal--For
importing a Number of large Jack Asses from Spain--For trading in
Human Hair--For fatting of Hogs--For a Wheel of Perpetual Motion." But
the most strange of all, perhaps, was "For an Undertaking which
shall in due time be revealed." Each subscriber was to pay down two