by Jonquil Antony
Production by Leslie Stokes
When, in the early eighteenth century, Harvey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed to discharge the National Debt by floating a stock company trading in the South Seas, it was the prelude to a story of mass delusion, money-madness, and speculation mania, the like of which has never been seen before or since. For six months during the year 1720 England went crazy. The populace, from lackey to lord, from dairymaid to duchess, begged, borrowed, sold, and in many cases undoubtedly stole, in order that they might throw their last half-penny into the South Seas. Fabulous rumours were current, expectations soared to impossible heights, and all the time the ' Bubble ' itself, which contained little beyond the vague hopes of politicians, the sanguine dreams of the investors, and the fraudulence of the directors, went on swelling towards the inevitable moment when it must burst. In answer to public clamour for ‘ money-for-nothing ’ other quixotic enterprises followed in its wake, and some ninety similar ' bubbles ' began to absorb the public's money. There were schemes for making salt water fresh, for trading in human hair, for making oil from poppies and for bringing live fish in tanks from sea to market. In. due course the ' bubbles ' were suppressed, their shares became valueless, and their indebted investors rushed to sell their great mass of unwanted South Sea stock...
Some fortunes, it is true, were made. but in the main it may be said that the South Sea Bubble contributed nothing to England but the ruination of thousands of her people.
(Empire Programme)