Thus there appeared to be a truce to quarrels, and to enmities abroad and at home. There was no dispute with any of the great Continental powers; there was no dread of the Stuarts. Ministerial rivalries had been reduced to concordance and quiet; the traditional quarrel between the Sovereign and the heir-apparent had been composed. It might have been thought that a time of peace and national prosperity had been assured. In the history of nations, however, we commonly find that nothing more certainly bodes unsettlement than a general conviction that everything is settled forever. {183} CHAPTER XI. "THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES." [Sidenote: 1718-1719--The Mississippi Scheme] One of the comedies of Ben Jonson gives some vivid and humorous illustrations of the mania for projects, speculations, patents, and monopolies that at his time had taken possession of the minds of Englishmen. There is an enterprising person who declares that he can coin money out of cobwebs, raise wool upon egg-shells, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones. He has a project "for the recovery of drowned land," a scheme for a new patent for the dressing of dog-skins for gloves, a plan for the bottling of ale, a device for making wine out of blackberries, and various other schemes cut and dry for what would now be called floating companies to make money. The civilized world is visited with this epidemic of project and speculation from time to time. In the reign of George the First such a mania attacked England much more fiercely than it had done even in the days of Ben Jonson. It came to us this time from France. The close of a great war is always a tempting and a favorable time for such enterprises. Finances are out of order; a season of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resources are to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he is when he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is an air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, like the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, the enterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if only human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been brought into a condition of something very like {184} bankruptcy by the long and wasting war; and a projector was found who promised to supply the deficiency as boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in the second part of "Faust." John Law, a Scotchman, and unquestionably a man of great ability and financial skill, had settled in France in consequence of having fought a duel and killed his man in his own country. [Sidenote: 1710-1720--The South Sea Company] Law set up a company which was to have a monopoly of the trade of the whole Mississippi region in North America, and on condition of the monopoly was to pay off the national debt of France. A scheme of the kind within due