Lord Macaulay has graphically described one of the periods of excess.

He says--'During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution the riches of the nation had been rapidly increasing.

Thousands of busy men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the year's housekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a surplus remained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a question of some difficulty.
In our time, to invest such a surplus, at something more than three per cent, on the best security that has ever been known in the world, is the work of a few minutes.

But in the seventeenth century, a lawyer, a physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands, and who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly embarrassed.

Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated wealth in a profession generally purchased real property, or lent his savings on mortgage.