wax, bearing the sign of the Globe Tavern, in the neighbourhood of
Exchange Alley, with the inscription of "Sail Cloth Permits." The
possessors enjoyed no other advantage from them than permission to
subscribe, at some future time, to a new sail-cloth manufactory,
projected by one who was then known to be a man of fortune, but who
was afterwards involved in the peculation and punishment of the South
Sea directors. These permits sold for as much as sixty guineas in the
Alley.

Persons of distinction, of both sexes, were deeply engaged in all
these bubbles, those of the male sex going to taverns and
coffee-houses to meet their brokers, and the ladies resorting for the
same purpose to the shops of milliners and haberdashers. But it did
not follow that all these people believed in the feasibility of the
schemes to which they subscribed; it was enough for their purpose that
their shares would, by stock-jobbing arts, be soon raised to a
premium, when they got rid of them with all expedition to the really
credulous. So great was the confusion of the crowd in the alley, that
shares in the same bubble were known to have been sold at the same
instant ten per cent. higher at one end of the alley than at the
other. Sensible men beheld the extraordinary infatuation of the people
with sorrow and alarm. There were some, both in and out of Parliament,
who foresaw clearly the ruin that was impending. Mr. Walpole did not
cease his gloomy forebodings. His fears were shared by all the
thinking few, and impressed most forcibly upon the government. On the
11th of June, the day the Parliament rose, the King published a
proclamation, declaring that all these unlawful projects should be
deemed public nuisances, and prosecuted accordingly, and forbidding
any broker, under a penalty of five hundred pounds, from buying or
selling any shares in them. Notwithstanding this proclamation, roguish