Walpole had kept his head cool during the days when the Company was soaring to the skies; he kept his head equally cool when it came down with a crash. "He had never," he said in the House of Commons, "approved of the South Sea scheme, and was sensible it had done a great deal of mischief; but, since it could not be undone, he thought it the duty of all good men to give their helping hand towards retrieving it; and with this view he had already bestowed some thoughts on a proposal to restore public credit, which at the proper time he would submit to the wisdom of the House." Walpole had made money by the South Sea scheme. The sound knowledge of the principles of finance, which enabled him to see that the enterprise thus conducted could not pay, in the end {197} enabled him also to see that it could pay up to a certain point; and when that point had been reached he quietly sold out and saved his gains. The King's mistresses and their relatives also made good profit out of the transactions. The Prince of Wales was a gainer by some of the season's speculations. But when the crash came, the ruin was wide-spread; it amounted to the proportions of a national calamity. The ruling classes raged and stormed against the vile conspirators who had disappointed them in their expectations of coining money out of cobwebs. The Lords and Commons held inquiries, passed resolutions, demanded impeachments. It was soon made manifest beyond all doubt that members of the Government had been scandalously implicated in the worst parts of the fraudulent speculations. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was only too clearly shown to be one of the leading delinquents. Mr. Craggs, the father, Postmaster-general, and James Craggs, the son, Secretary of State, were likewise involved. Both were remarkable men. The father had begun life as a common barber, and partly by capacity and partly by the thrift that follows fawning, had made his way up in the world until he reached the height from which he was suddenly and so ignominiously to fall. It was hardly worth the trouble thus to toil and push and climb, only to tumble down with such shame and ruin. Craggs the father had had great transfers of South Sea stock made to him for which he never paid. Craggs the son, the Secretary of State, had acted as the go-between in the transactions of the Company with the King's mistresses, whereby the influence of these ladies was purchased for a handsome consideration. Charles Stanhope, one of the Secretaries to the Treasury and cousin of the Minister, was shown to have received large value in the stock of the Company for which he never paid. The most ghastly ruin fell on some of these men. Craggs the younger died suddenly on the very day when the report incriminating him was read in the House of Commons. Craggs the father poisoned himself a few {198} days afterwards. Pope wrote an epitaph on the son, in which he described him as--