The speculative frenzy of 1825 differed from the railway mania of the next generation in that it had no solid basis of remunerative investment. The development of the railway system, after the application of locomotive steam engines to iron tramways, offered a legitimate promise of large profits, and this promise would have been still more amply realised but for the shameful waste of capital on competition and law expenses. It was otherwise with the dupes and victims of the rage for speculation which possessed all classes of society in 1825, and arose out of an immense accumulation of wealth for which no safe employment could be found at home except at a modest rate of interest. The weakening of the hold of Spain on South America left her colonies open to foreign trade, but the enterprises there and elsewhere which absorbed the hard-won savings of humble families, by thousands and tens of thousands, were nearly all chimerical, and some of them grotesque in their absurdity. Whether or not warming-pans and skates were actually exported to the tropics, it is certain that Scotch dairy-women emigrated to Buenos Ayres for the purpose of milking wild cows and churning butter for people who preferred oil. The incredible multiplication of bubble-companies was facilitated by a marvellous cheapness of money, largely due to an inordinate issue of notes by country bankers, and even by the Bank of England, in spite of the fact that gold and silver were known to be leaving the country in vast quantities, especially in the shape of loans to France. The inevitable reaction came when the Bank of England contracted its issue of notes in order to arrest the drain of gold; goods recklessly bought up had to be sold at a fearful loss, bills upon which advances had been made proved to be of no value, and several great London banking houses stopped payment, bringing down in their fall a much larger number of country banks dependent on them.