Extraordinary Popular Delusions

by Mackay, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780486432236
• ISBN10: 0486432238
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-27
• Publisher: Dover Publications

Summary

Originally published in England in 1841, this compelling study offers a remarkable survey of human folly. The first of the financial scandals discussed, The Mississippi Scheme, concerns a disasterous 18th-century plan for the commercial exploitation of the Mississippi valley. During the same era, thousands of English investors were ruined by the South-Sea Bubble, a stock exchange based on British trade with the islands of the South Seas and South America. The third and final incident covered by this volume involves Holland's seventeenth-century Tulipomania, during which people went into debt in order to collect tulip bulbs, until a sudden depreciation in their value rendered them worthless-except as flowers. These historic events, fired by greed and fed by naïveté, remain ever-relevant and continue to enthrall modern readers. Unabridged republication of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions as published by Richard Bentley, London, 1841.

Table of Contents

The Mississippi Scheme	1	(46)
John Law; his birth and youthful career
Duel between Law and Wilson
Law's escape from the King's Bench
The ``Land-bank''
Law's gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans
State of France after the reign of Louis XIV
Paper money instituted in that country by Law
Enthusiasm of the French People at the Mississippi Scheme
Marshal Villars
Stratagems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law
Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock
Dreadful murders
Law created comptroller-general of finances
Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris
Financial difficulties commence
Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind
Payment stopped at the bank
Law dismissed from the ministry
Payments made in specie
Law and the Regent satirised in song
Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme
Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice
Death of the Regent
Law obliged to resort again to gambling
his death at Venice
The South-Sea Bubble	46	(43)
Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford
Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement
Mr. Walpole
Sir John Blunt
Great demand for shares
Innumerable ``Bubbles''
List of nefarious projects and bubbles
Great rise in South-Sea stock
Sudden fall
General meeting of the directors
Fearful climax of the South-Sea expedition
Its effects on society
Uproar in the House of Commons
Escape of Knight
Apprehension of Sir John Blunt
Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont
His second escape
Persons connected with the scheme examined
Their respective punishments
Concluding remarks
The Tulipomania	89
Conrad Gesner
Tulips brought from Vienna to England
Rage for the tulip among the Dutch
Its great value
Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip
Regular marts for tulips
Tulips employed as a means of speculation
Great depreciation in their value
End of the mania