gnineas, and hereafter to receive a share of one hundred, with a
disclosure of the object; and so tempting was the offer, that 1,000
of these subscriptions were paid the same morning, with which the
projector went off in the afternoon.' In 1825 there were
speculations in companies nearly as wild, and just before 1866 there
were some of a like nature, though not equally extravagant. The fact
is, that the owners of savings not finding, in adequate quantities,
their usual kind of investments, rush into anything that promises
speciously, and when they find that these specious investments can
be disposed of at a high profit, they rush into them more and more.
The first taste is for high interest, but that taste soon becomes
secondary. There is a second appetite for large gains to be made by
selling the principal which is to yield the interest. So long as
such sales can be effected the mania continues; when it ceases to be
possible to effect them, ruin begins.

So long as the savings remain in possession of their owners, these
hazardous gamblings in speculative undertakings are almost the whole
effect of an excess of accumulation over tested investment. Little
effect is produced on the general trade of the country. The owners
of the savings are too scattered and far from the market to change
the majority of mercantile transactions. But when these savings come
to be lodged in the hands of bankers, a much wider result is
produced. Bankers are close to mercantile life; they are always
ready to lend on good mercantile securities; they wish to lend on
such securities a large part of the money entrusted to them. When,
therefore, the money so entrusted is unusually large, and when it
long continues so, the general trade of the country is, in the
course of time, changed. Bankers are daily more and more ready to
lend money to mercantile men; more is lent to such men; more