Of the many speculative schemes of the early eighteenth century, none is better known than the “South Sea Bubble.”  After a long period during which English trade with the Spanish West Indies was carried on by subterfuge, an Act of Parliament in 1710 incorporated into a joint-stock company the state creditors, upon the basis of their loan of ten million pounds to the Government and conferred upon them the monopoly of the English trade with the Indies.  In spite of these advantages, however, the South Sea Company found itself so hampered and limited in credit that it offered to convert the national debt into a “single redeemable obligation” to the company in return for a monopoly of British foreign trade outside England.  The immediate and spectacular effect of that offer is reflected in the many descriptions, both serious and satiric, of an era of speculation which to many generations might seem incredible—­though not to this generation which has itself lived through an orgy of speculation.

Clearly the South Sea Bubble, which reached its climax in 1720, was the chief source of Captain Samuel Brunt’s satire, which has an important place in the minor literature called forth by the wild speculation connected with the Bubble.[1] If the “Projects” proposed to Captain Brunt[2] seem extreme to any modern reader, let him turn to the list of “bubbles,” still accessible in many places.[3] Nothing in Brunt is so fantastic as many of the actual schemes suggested and acted upon in the eighteenth century.  The possibility of extracting gold from the mountains of the moon is no more fanciful than several of the proposals seriously received by Englishmen under the spell of speculation.  As in the kingdom of Cacklogallinia, so in London, men mortgaged their homes and women sold their jewels [4] in order to purchase shares in wildcat companies, born one day, only to die the next.  As the anonymous author of one of many South Sea Ballads wrote in his “Merry Remarks upon Exchange Alley Bubbles”: 

  Our greatest ladies hither come,
  And ply in chariots daily;
  Oft pawn their jewels for a sum
  To venture in the Alley.

The meteoric rise in the price of shares in the moon-mountain project of the Cacklogallinians is no greater than the actual rise in prices of shares during the South Sea Bubble, when, between April and July, 1720, shares rose from L120 to L1,020.  The fluctuating market of the Cacklogallinian ’Change, which responded to every rumor, follows faithfully the actual situation in London in 1720; and the final crash which shook Cacklogallinian foundations—­subtly suggested by Brunt’s unwillingness to return and face the enraged multitude—­is an echo of the crash which shook England when the Bubble was pricked.