Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS By Charles Mackay Author Of "The Thames And Its Tributaries," "The Hope Of The World," Etc. "Il est bon de connaitre les delires de l'esprit humain. Chaque people a ses folies plus ou moins grossieres." MILLOT VOL I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY. 1841. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE THE TULIPOMANIA RELICS MODERN PROPHECIES POPULAR ADMIRATION FOR GREAT THIEVES INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND RELIGION ON THE HAIR AND BEARD DUELS AND ORDEALS THE LOVE OF THE MARVELOUS AND THE DISBELIEF OF THE TRUE POPULAR FOLLIES IN GREAT CITIES THE O. P. MANIA THE THUGS, OR PHANSIGARS NATIONAL DELUSIONS. N'en deplaise a ces fous nommes sages de Grece; En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse; Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgre tous leurs soins, Ne different entre eux que du plus ou du moins. BOILEAU. In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the Sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land: another age went mad for fear of the Devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the Philosopher's Stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence in very many countries of Europe to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilized and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originated,--that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate entirely from the popular mind.