“Then came his two errors, one remedial, the other fatal. No. 1, he created a paper company and blew it up to a bubble. When the shares had reached the skies, they began to come down, like stones, by an inevitable law. No. 2, to save them from their coming fate, he propped them with his bank. Overrating the power of governments, and underrating Nature's, he married the Mississippi shares (at forty times their value) to his banknotes by edict. What was the consequence? The bank paper, sound in itself, became rotten by marriage. Nothing could save the share-paper. The bank paper, making common cause with it, shared its fate. Had John Law let his two tubs each stand on its own bottom, the shares would have gone back to what they came from--nothing; the bank, based as it was on specie, backed stoutly by the government, and respected by the people for great national services, would have weathered the storm and lasted to this day. But he tied his rickety child to his healthy child, and flung them into a stormy sea, and told them to swim together: they sank together. Now observe, sir, the fatal error that ruined the great financier in 1720 is this day proposed to us. We are to connect our bank with bubble companies by the double tie of loans and liability. John Law was sore tempted. The Mississippi Company was his own child as well as the bank. Love of that popularity he had drunk so deeply, egotism, and parental partiality, combined to obscure that great man's judgment. But, with us, folly stands naked on one side, bubbles in hand--common sense and printed experience on the other. These six specimen bubbles here are not _our_ children. Let me see whose they are, aliases excepted.” “Very good, young gentleman, very good. Now it is my turn. I have got a word or two to say on the other side. The journals, which are so seldom agreed, are all of one mind about these glorious times. Account for that!” “How can you know their minds, sir?” “By their leading columns.” “Those are no clue.” “What! Do they think one thing and print another? Why should the independent press do that? Nonsense.” “Why, sir? Because they are bribed to print it, but they are not bribed to think it.” “Bribed? The English press bribed?” “Oh, not directly, like the English freeman. Oblige me with a journal or two, no matter which; they are all tarred with the same stick in time of bubble. Here, sir, are 50 pounds worth of bubble advertisements, yielding a profit of say 25 pounds on this single issue. In this one are nearer 100 pounds worth of such advertisements. Now is it in nature that a newspaper, which is a trade speculation, should say the word that would blight its own harvest? This is the oblique road by which the English press is bribed. These leaders are mere echoes of to-day's advertisement sheet, and bidders for to-morrow's.” “The world gets worse every day, Skinner.” “It gets no better,” replied Richard, philosophically.