A still simpler device was imagined by a gentleman whose name (alas!) is not known. He propounded a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, “but nobody to know what it is.” The capital of this singular undertaking was to be a mere fleabite--half a million pounds in five thousand £100 shares. But--and here the anonymous benefactor showed his discretion--you had only to deposit £2 a share and you obtained by the mere fact of that deposit £100 a year on each share. This worthy person opened his office in the morning. By the time business in Change Alley ceased and the ladies and gentlemen retired to the lighted candles of the West End, he had secured deposits to the tune of £2,000. The next morning the office was closed and it was never opened again. These schemes were iridescent as the mayfly, and had just as long a life. They sparkled and glinted in the sunlight through a day, and the next morning they were not. After the shares of the South Sea Company had risen to 800 per cent., a good many prudent people began to realise their fortunes, and stocks accordingly fell. The Directors asked for more money, obtained it, and the shares in August had risen to no less than a thousand per cent. But the end was near, and in the month of September the Bubble burst. A member of Parliament of that day wrote to Lord Chancellor Middleton: “The consternation is inexpressible, the rage beyond description, and the case altogether so desperate that I do not see any plan or scheme so much as thought of for averting the blow, so that I cannot pretend to guess what is next to be done.” The Bank of England made an effort. It asked for a subscription of three million pounds for the restoration of credit, but did not get it. The South Sea Stock fell to 135, and bankers and goldsmiths who had lent money on South Sea Bonds were compelled to fly the country. Parliament was summoned to meet, and George the First returned post haste from Hanover. An enquiry was instituted into the management of the Company and a series of frauds was discovered in which members of the Government were shamefully involved. Mr. Secretary Craggs and Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, went down with a crash. People did not exact from the Ministers of the Crown in those days the same high standard of propriety which is demanded to-day. But the scandal in this case was too great for extenuation. Aislabie went to prison, and bonfires were lighted in the London streets on the day he was sent there. Mr. Secretary Craggs no doubt would have gone on the same road but his son, for whose sake, it was currently said, he had amassed a million and a half out of the Bubble, died suddenly, and the father was stricken with apoplexy. The Countess Von Platen, with her two nieces, was proved to have been given £20,000 worth of fictitious stock as an inducement to her to use her influence to push the Bill through Parliament. There