Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849

The range of the jobbers speedily extended itself beyond the comparatively narrow field presented by the funds. Exchequer bills with a variable premium were invented and brought into the market, a large and lucrative business was done in lottery tickets, and even seats in parliament were negotiated on the Stock Exchange. Joint-stock companies next came into play, and these have ever since proved an inexhaustible mine of wealth to the jobbers. Nor were they in the least particular as to the nature of the commodity in which they dealt. Thomas Guy, founder of the hospital called after his name, acquired his fortune by means similar to those which are now made matter of reproach to the Jews of Portsmouth and Plymouth. It is a curious feature in the history of mankind, that money questionably amassed is more often destined to pious uses than the savings of honest industry. The conscience of the usurer becomes alarmed as the hour of dissolution draws nigh. "His principal dealings were in those tickets with which, from the time of the second Charles, the seamen had been remunerated. After years of great endurance, and of greater labour, the defenders of the land were paid with inconvertible paper; and the seamen, too often improvident, were compelled to part with their wages at any discount, which the conscience of the usurer would offer. Men who had gone the round of the world like Drake, or had fought hand to hand with Tromp, were unable to compete with the keen agent of the usurer, who, decoying them into the low haunts of Rotherhithe, purchased their tickets at the lowest possible price; and skilled seamen, the glory of England's navy, were thus robbed, and ruined, and compelled to transfer their services to foreign states. In these tickets did Thomas Guy deal, and on the savings of these men was the vast superstructure of his fortune reared. But jobbing in them was as frequent in the high places of England as in 'Change Alley. The seaman was poor and uninfluential, and the orders which were refused payment to him were paid to the wealthy jobber, who parted with some of his plunder as a premium to the treasury to disgorge the remainder." But frauds and injustice, even when countenanced by governments, have rarely other than a disastrous issue to the state. So in the case of those seamen's tickets. That the wages due to the sailor should have fallen into arrears during the reigns of Charles and of James, need excite little surprise, when we remember that the revenue in their day never exceeded two millions annually. But that the abuse should have been continued after the revolutionary government had discovered its easy method of raising subsidies – more especially when ample proof had been given of the danger of such a system, by the want of alacrity displayed by the English seamen when the Dutch fleet burned our vessels in the Thames and threatened Chatham – is indeed matter of marvel, and speaks volumes as to the gross corruption of the times. So infamous was the neglect, that at length the sailors' tickets had accumulated to the amount of nine millions sterling of arrears. Not one farthing had been provided to meet this huge demand; and in order to stay the clamours of the holders – not now mariners, but men of the stamp of Thomas Guy, – parliament erected them into that body known as the South Sea Company, the transactions of which will ever be memorable in the commercial history of Great Britain.

The existence of this company dates from the reign of Queen Anne; but for some years its operations were conducted on a small scale, and it only assumed importance in 1719, when exclusive privileges of trading within certain latitudes were assured to it. We quote from Mr Doubleday the following particulars, which utterly eclipse the grandeur of modern gambling and duplicity.

"As soon as the act had fairly passed the Houses, the stock of the company at once rose to three hundred and nineteen per cent ; and a mad epidemic of speculative gambling seemed, at once, to seize the whole nation, with the exception of Mr Hutchison, and a few others, who not only preserved their sanity, but energetically warned the public of the ultimate fate of the scheme and its dupes. The public, however, was deaf. The first sales of stock by the Court of Directors were made at three hundred per cent. Two millions and a quarter were taken, and the market price at one reached three hundred and forty – double the first instalment according to the terms of payment. To set out handsomely, the Court voted a dividend of ten per cent upon South Sea Stock, being only a half-yearly dividend, payable at midsummer 1720. To enable persons to hold, they also offered to lend half a million on security of their own stock; and afterwards increased the amount to a million, or nearly so. These bold steps gained the whole affair such an increase of credit, that, upon a bare notice that certain irredeemable annuities would be received for stock, upon terms hereafter to be settled, numbers of annuitants deposited their securities at the South Sea House, without knowing the terms! About June, when the first half-yearly dividend was becoming due, the frenzy rose to such a pitch, that the stock was sold at eight hundred and ninety per cent . This extravagance, however, made so many sellers, that the price suddenly fell, and uneasiness began to be manifested; when the Directors had the inconceivable audacity to propose to create new stock at one thousand per cent , to be paid in ten instalments of one hundred pounds each. Strange to relate, this desperate villany turned the tide again, and, to use the words of Anderson, 'in a few days the hundred pound instalment was worth four hundred !'"

We invariably find that the success, whether real or pretended, of any one scheme, gives rise to a host of imitations. If any new company, whatever be its object, is started, and the shares are selling at a premium, we may look with perfect confidence for the announcement of six or seven others before as many days have elapsed. This is, of course, partly owing to the cupidity of the public; but that cupidity could not manifest itself so soon in a tangible form, but for the machinations of certain parties, who see their way to a profit whatever may be the result of the speculation. Amidst the ruin and desolation which invariably follow those seasons of infuriated and infatuated gambling, to which we are now almost habituated, such men preserve a tranquil and a calm demeanour. And no wonder: they have reaped the harvest which the folly of others has sown. At the hottest and most exciting period of the game, they have their senses as completely under control as the sharper who has deliberately dined on chicken and lemonade, with the prospect of encountering afterwards an inebriated victim at Crockford's. They may play largely, but they only do so while their hand is safe; the moment luck changes, they sell out, and leave the whole loss to be borne by the unfortunate dupes, who, believing in their deliberate falsehoods, still continue to hold on, trusting to the advent of those fabulous better times which, in their case, never can arrive. It has been so in our own times, and it was so when the South Sea bubble was expanding on its visionary basis. Multitudes of minor schemes were projected, subscribed for, and driven up to an exorbitant premium. The shares of really solid companies participated in the rise, and mounted correspondingly in the market. The nominal value of all the sorts of stock then afloat was computed at no less than five hundred millions; being exactly double the estimated value of the whole lands, houses, and real property in the kingdom!

The collapse came, and brought ruin to thousands who thought that they held fortune within their grasp. The history of the downfall is not less suggestive than that of the rapid rise. It has had its parallel in our days, when the most rotten and unsubstantial of companies have brazened out their frauds to the last, doctored accounts, declared fictitious dividends, and threatened with legal prosecution those who had the courage and the honesty to expose them.