In a pompous advertisement it was announced that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged the best masters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty thousand tickets at twenty shillings each.

There was to be a lottery--two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of the prizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry, japaning, fortification, bookkeeping, and the art of playing the theorbo.' The panic was forgotten till Lord Macaulay revived the memory of it.
But, in fact, in the South Sea Bubble, which has always been remembered, the form was the same, only a little more extravagant; the companies in that mania were for objects such as these:--' "Wrecks to be fished for on the Irish Coast--Insurance of Horses and other Cattle (two millions)--Insurance of Losses by Servants--To make Salt Water Fresh--For building of Hospitals for Bastard Children--For building of Ships against Pirates--For making of Oil from Sun-flower Seeds--For improving of Malt Liquors--For recovery of Seamen's Wages--For extracting of Silver from Lead--For the transmuting of Quicksilver into a malleable and fine Metal--For making of Iron with Pit-coal--For importing a Number of large Jack Asses from Spain--For trading in Human Hair--For fatting of Hogs--For a Wheel of Perpetual Motion." But the most strange of all, perhaps, was "For an Undertaking which shall in due time be revealed." Each subscriber was to pay down two guineas, and hereafter to receive a share of one hundred, with a disclosure of the object; and so tempting was the offer, that 1,000 of these subscriptions were paid the same morning, with which the projector went off in the afternoon.' In 1825 there were speculations in companies nearly as wild, and just before 1866 there were some of a like nature, though not equally extravagant.

The fact is, that the owners of savings not finding, in adequate quantities, their usual kind of investments, rush into anything that promises speciously, and when they find that these specious investments can be disposed of at a high profit, they rush into them more and more.
The first taste is for high interest, but that taste soon becomes secondary.

There is a second appetite for large gains to be made by selling the principal which is to yield the interest.

So long as such sales can be effected the mania continues; when it ceases to be possible to effect them, ruin begins.
So long as the savings remain in possession of their owners, these hazardous gamblings in speculative undertakings are almost the whole effect of an excess of accumulation over tested investment.