hoped would render it more acceptable. The principal change was a
stipulation that the government might redeem these debts at the
expiration of four years, instead of seven, as at first suggested. The
Bank resolved not to be outbidden in this singular auction, and the
Governors also reconsidered their first proposal, and sent in a new
one.

Thus, each corporation having made two proposals, the House began
to deliberate. Mr. Robert Walpole was the chief speaker in favour of
the Bank, and Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the
principal advocate on behalf of the South Sea Company. It was
resolved, on the 2nd of February, that the proposals of the latter
were most advantageous to the country. They were accordingly received,
and leave was given to bring in a bill to that effect.

Exchange Alley was in a fever of excitement. The Company's stock,
which had been at a hundred and thirty the previous day, gradually
rose to three hundred, and continued to rise with the most astonishing
rapidity during the whole time that the bill in its several stages was
under discussion. Mr. Walpole was almost the only statesman in the
House who spoke out boldly against it. He warned them, in eloquent and
solemn language, of the evils that would ensue. It countenanced, he
said, "the dangerous practice of stockjobbing, and would divert the
genius of the nation from trade and industry. It would hold out a
dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to their ruin, by making them part
with the earnings of their labour for a prospect of imaginary wealth.
The great principle of the project was an evil of first-rate
magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of the stock, by
exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by promising
dividends out of funds which could never be adequate to the purpose.