On these hard conditions and slender privileges was the great Bubble blown into popular esteem. Rumours of commercial treaties between England and Spain were circulated, whereby the latter was to grant free trade to all her colonies; the rich produce of the Potosi mines “was to be brought to England until silver should become almost as plentiful as iron. For cotton and woollen goods, with which we could supply them in abundance, the dwellers in Mexico were to empty their golden mines. The company of merchants trading to the South Seas would be the richest the world ever saw, and every hundred pounds invested would produce hundreds per annum to the stockholder.”(13) These and still more lying statements were spread in every direction. The stock rose like a rocket. And, so far as the present writer can discover, the first voyage of the one annual ship, not made till 1717, six years after the first establishment of the company, was also its last! The following year the trade was suppressed by the rupture with Spain. “It seemed at that time as if the whole nation had turned stock-jobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up by crowds, and Cornhill was impassable for the number of carriages. Everybody came to purchase stock. ‘Every fool aspired to be a knave.’ In the words of a ballad published at the time, and sung about the streets— “‘Then stars and garters did appear Among the meaner rabble; To buy and sell, to see and hear The Jews and Gentiles squabble. ‘The greatest ladies thither came, And plied in chariots daily; Or pawned their jewels for a sum To venture in the Alley.’” Not merely South Sea stock, but schemes of even a wilder nature now deluged the market. It would seem incredible, but it is vouched for on good authority, that one adventurer started “_A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is_,” and in one day sold a thousand shares, the deposit on which was £2 per share. He thought it prudent to decamp with the £2,000, and was no more heard of. Mackay publishes a list of eighty-six bubble companies, which were eventually declared illegal and abolished. But the South Sea Bubble was a Triton among these minnows, and the directors, having once tasted the profits of their scheme by the rapid rise of its shares, kept their emissaries at work. Nor indeed were they much needed, for every person interested in the stock endeavoured to draw a knot of listeners round him in ’Change Alley, or its purlieus, to whom he expatiated on the treasures of the South American Seas. Then came the rumour that Gibraltar was to be exchanged for certain places on the coast of Peru. Instead of paying a tribute to the King of Spain, the company would be able to trade freely, and send as many ships as they liked. “Visions of ingots danced before their eyes,”