During the progress of this famous bubble, England presented a
singular spectacle. The public mind was in a state of unwholesome
fermentation. Men were no longer satisfied with the slow but sure
profits of cautious industry. The hope of boundless wealth for the
morrow made them heedless and extravagant for to-day. A luxury, till
then unheard-of, was introduced, bringing in its train a corresponding
laxity of morals. The overbearing insolence of ignorant men, who had
arisen to sudden wealth by successful gambling, made men of true
gentility of mind and manners, blush that gold should have power to
raise the unworthy in the scale of society. The haughtiness of some of
these "cyphering cits," as they were termed by Sir Richard Steele, was
remembered against them in the day of their adversity. In the
Parliamentary inquiry, many of the directors suffered more for their
insolence than for their peculation. One of them, who, in the
full-blown pride of an ignorant rich man, had said that he would feed
his horse upon gold, was reduced almost to bread and water for
himself; every haughty look, every overbearing speech, was set down,
and repaid them a hundredfold in poverty and humiliation.

The state of matters all over the country was so alarming, that
George I shortened his intended stay in Hanover, and returned in all
haste to England. He arrived on the 11th of November, and Parliament
was summoned to meet on the 8th of December. In the mean time, public
meetings were held in every considerable town of the empire, at which
petitions were adopted, praying the vengeance of the Legislature upon
the South Sea directors, who, by their fraudulent practices, had
brought the nation to the brink of ruin. Nobody seemed to imagine that
the nation itself was as culpable as the South Sea Company. Nobody
blamed the credulity and avarice of the people,--the degrading lust of