The anxiety of both Houses of Parliament to reduce the national debt fostered a scheme, brought to bear in the eleventh year of Queen Anne’s reign, of forming a fund for paying the interest of the debt, in an annuity of six per cent. All taxes upon wines, sugar, vinegar, tobacco, India silks, and other goods, were appropriated to the aid of this fund, and to the shareholders was granted the monopoly of a trade to the South Sea, or coast of Peru, in Mexico; and proprietors of navy bills and other securities were incorporated into a company which, under the name of the South Sea Company, was soon regarded by the public as a community possessing the most enviable privileges. The first scheme of this notable project was framed by Harley. Sunderland afterwards carried it on, and by this means sought to strengthen his parliamentary interest. A wild spirit of speculation inflamed the minds of innumerable suitors to the ministers, through whose influence shares were alone obtained; and even the prudent and experienced Marlborough was tempted, upon the revival of the scheme in the present reign, to increase the share which he had originally held in the stock.[265] Sir John Blount, a scrivener, who matured, if it could be so called, the South Sea scheme, had formed his plan upon the Mississippi scheme, which in the preceding year had failed in France, and had ruined whole families. Undeterred by this warning, even the wary Duchess of Marlborough sought and obtained from Lord Sunderland subscriptions for herself, and her friends and connexions, as the greatest boon that ministerial power could grant. But to her sound, shrewd mind the fallacy of all the expectations which a greedy public formed, was very soon apparent. The Duchess was not one of those stars of our later days, before whom an astonished world bends with adoration. Mathematics and logic had never directed her powerful understanding. She was no political economist; her speculations on all such subjects arose out of the great practical lessons which she had witnessed. Her education had been limited. To arithmetic as a science she was a stranger. “Lady Bute,” says the ingenious writer of recently published anecdotes of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, “sat by her (the Duchess) whilst she dined, or watched her in the curious process of casting up her accounts—curious, because her grace, well versed as she was in all matters relating to money, such as getting it, hoarding it, and turning it to the best advantage, knew nothing of common arithmetic. But her sound, clear head could invent an arithmetic of its own. To lookers-on it appeared as if a child had scribbled over the paper, setting down figures here and there at random; and yet every sum came right to a fraction at last, in defiance of Cocker.”[266]