The Great Mississippi Bubble - Page 2

stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a
region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of
knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of
snug percentage become despicable in his eyes; no "operation" is thought
worthy of attention that does not double or treble the investment. No
business is worth following that does not promise an immediate fortune. As
he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind his ear, he is like La
Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his books of chivalry. His dusty
counting-house fades before his eyes, or changes into a Spanish mine; he
gropes after diamonds, or dives after pearls. The subterranean garden of
Aladdin is nothing to the realms of wealth that break upon his imagination.

Could this delusion always last, the life of a merchant would indeed be a
golden dream; but it is as short as it is brilliant. Let but a doubt enter,
and the "season of unexampled prosperity" is at end. The coinage of words
is suddenly curtailed; the promissory capital begins to vanish into smoke;
a panic succeeds, and the whole superstructure, built upon credit and
reared by speculation, crumbles to the ground, leaving scarce a wreck
behind:

"It is such stuff as dreams are made of."

When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of fortunes
suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers busy; when he
sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of scheme and enterprise;
when he perceives a greater disposition to buy than to sell; when trade
overflows its accustomed channels and deluges the country; when he hears of
new regions of commercial adventure; of distant marts and distant mines,
swallowing merchandise and disgorging gold; when he finds joint-stock
companies of all kinds forming; railroads, canals, and locomotive engines,
springing up on every side; when idlers suddenly become men of business,
and dash into the game of commerce as they would into the hazards of the
faro table; when he beholds the streets glittering with new equipages,
palaces conjured up by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with
sudden success, and vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a
word, when he hears the whole community joining in the theme of "unexampled
prosperity," let him look upon the whole as a "weather-breeder," and
prepare for the impending storm.

The foregoing remarks are intended merely as a prelude to a narrative I am
about to lay before the public, of one of the most memorable instances of
the infatuation of gain to be found in the whole history of commerce. I
allude to the famous Mississippi Bubble. It is a matter that has passed
into a proverb,