success, it is in the merchandising part of the world, who indeed may more truly be said to live by their wits than any people whatsoever. All foreign negoce, though to some it is a plain road by the help of custom, yet it is in its beginning all project, contrivance, and invention. Every new voyage the merchant contrives, is a project, and ships are sent from port to port, as markets and merchandises differ, by the help of strange and universal intelligence, wherein some are so exquisite, so swift, and so exact, that a merchant sitting at home in his counting-house, at once converses with all parts of the known world. This, and travel, makes a true-bred merchant the most intelligent man in the world, and consequently the most capable, when urged by necessity, to contrive new ways to live; and from hence, I humbly conceive, may very properly be derived the projects, so much the subject of the present discourse. And to this sort of men it is easy to trace the original of banks, stocks, stockjobbing, assurances, friendly societies, lotteries, and the like.

To this may be added the long annual inquiry in the House of Commons for ways and means, which has been a particular movement to set all the heads of the nation at work; and I appeal, with submission, to the gentlemen of that honourable house, if the greatest part of all the ways and means, out of the common road of land-taxes, polls, and the like, have not been handed to them from the merchant, and in a great measure paid by them too.

However, I offer this but as an essay at the original of this prevailing humour of the people, and as it is probable, so it is also possible to be otherwise, which I submit to future demonstration.

Of the several ways this faculty of projecting have exerted itself, and of the various methods, as the genius of the authors has inclined, I have been a diligent observer, and in most an unconcerned spectator, and, perhaps, have some advan- || tage from thence more easily to discover the faux pas of the actors. If I have given an essay towards anything new, or made discovery to advantage of any contrivance now on foot, all men are at the liberty to make use of the improvement; if any fraud is discovered, as now practised, it is without any particular reflection upon parties or persons.

Projects of the nature I treat about, are doubtless in general of public advantage, as they tend to improvement of trade, and employment of the poor, and the circulation and increase of the public stock of the kingdom; but this is supposed of such as are built on the honest basis of ingenuity and improvement, in which, though I will allow the author to aim primarily at his own advantage, yet with the circumstances of public benefit added.

Wherefore it is necessary to distinguish among the projects of the present times, between the honest and the dishonest.

There are, and that too many, fair pretences of fine discoveries, new inventions, engines, and I know not what, which being advanced in notion, and talked up to great things to be performed when such and such sums of money shall be advanced, and such and such engines are made,

have raised the fancies of credulous people to such height, that merely on the shadow of expectation, they have formed companies, chose committees, appointed officers, shares and books, raised great stocks, and cried up an empty notion to that degree, that people have been betrayed to part with their money for shares in a new. nothing; and when the inventors have carried on the jest till they have sold all their own inte rest, they leave the cloud to vanish of itself, and the poor purchasers to quarrel with one another and go to law about settlements, transferrings, and some bone or other thrown among them by the subtlety of the author, to lay the blame of the miscarriage upon themselves. Thus the shares at first begin to fall by degrees, and happy is he that sells in time, till, like brass money, it will go at last for nothing at all. So have I seen shares in joint-stocks, patents, engines, and undertakings, blown up by the air of great words, and the name of some man of credit concerned to 1001. for a five hundredth part or share, some more, and at last dwindle away till it has been stock-jobbed down to 10, 12, 9, 81. a share, and at last no buyer; that is, in short, the fine new word for nothing-worth, and many families ruined by the purchase. If I should name linen manufactures, saltpetre works, copper mines, diving engines, dipping, and the like, for instances of this I should, I believe, do no wrong to truth, or to some persons too visibly guilty.

I might go on upon this subject to expose the frauds and tricks of stock-jobbers, engineers, patentees, committees, with those exchange mountebanks we very properly call brokers, but I have not gall enough for such a work; but as a general rule of caution to those who would not be tricked out of their estates by such pretenders to new inventions, let them observe that all such people who may be suspected of design have assuredly this in their proposal, your money to the author must go before the experiment; and here 1 could give a very diverting history of a patentmonger, wnose cully was nobody but myself; but I defer it to another occasion.

But this is no reason why invention upon honest foundations, and to fair purposes, should not be encouraged; no, nor why the author of any such fair contrivances should not reap the harvest of his own ingenuity: our acts of parliament for granting patents to first inventors for fourteen years, is a sufficient acknowledgment of the due regard which ought to be had to such as find out anything which may be of public advantage; new discoveries in trade, in arts and mysteries, of manufacturing goods, or improvement of land, are without question of as great benefit, as any discoveries made in the works of nature by all the academies and royal societies in the world.

There is, it is true, a great difference between new inventions and projects, between improve. ment of manufactures or lands, which tend to the immediate benefit of the public and employing of the poor, and projects framed by subtle heads, with a sort of a deceptio visus and legerdemain, to bring people to run needless and unusual hazards. I grant it, and give a due preference to the first, and yet success has so sanctified some of those other sorts of projects, that it would be

NECESSITY, which is allowed to be the mother of invention, has so violently agitated the wits of men at this time, that it seems not at all improper, by way of distinction, to call it the "Projecting Age." For though in times of war and public confusions the like humour of invention has seemed to stir, yet, without being partial to the present, it is, I think, no injury to say, the past ages have never come up to the degree of projecting and inventing, as it refers to matters of negoce and methods of civil polity, which we see this age arrived to.

Nor is it a hard matter to assign probable causes of the perfection in this modern art. I am not of their melancholy opinion who ascribe it to the general poverty of the nation, since I believe it is easy to prove the nation itself, taking it as one general stock, is not at all diminished or impoverished by this long, this chargeable war, but, on the contrary, was never richer since it was inhabited.

Nor am I absolutely of the opinion that we are so happy as to be wiser in this age than our forefathers, though at the same time I must own, some parts of knowledge in science as well as art has received improvements in this age, altogether concealed from the former.

The art of war, which I take to be the highest perfection of human knowledge, is a sufficient proof of what I say, especially in conducting armies and in offensive engines; witness the new ways of mines, fougades, entrenchments, attacks, lodgments, and a long et cetera of new inventions which want names, practised in sieges and encampments; witness the new sorts of bombs and unheard-of mortars, of seven to ten ton weight, with which our fleets, standing two or three miles off at sea, can imitate God Almighty himself, and rain fire and brimstone out of heaven, as it were, upon towns built on the firm land; witness also our new-invented child of hell, the machine which carries thunder, lightning, and earthquakes in its bowels, and tears up the most Impregnable fortifications.

But if I would search for a cause from whence it comes to pass that this age swarms with such a multitude of projectors more than usual, who, besides the innumerable conceptions which die in the bringing forth, and (like abortions of the brain) only come into the air and dissolve, do really every day produce new contrivances, engines, and projects to get money, never before

thought of; if, I say, I would examine whence this comes to pass, it must be thus:

The losses and depredations which this war brought with it at first were exceeding many, suffered chiefly by the ill conduct of merchants themselves, who did not apprehend the danger to be really what it was, for before our admiralty could possibly settle convoys, cruisers, and stations for men-of-war all over the world, the French covered the sea with their privateers, and took an incredible number of our ships. I have heard the loss computed by those who pretended they were able to guess, at above fifteen millions of pounds sterling, in ships and goods, in the first two or three years of the war, a sum which, if put into French, would make such a rumbling sound of great numbers, as would fright a weak accomptant out of his belief, being no less than one hundred and ninety millions of livres. The weight of this loss fell chiefly on the trading part of the nation, and amongst them, on the merchants, and amongst them again, upon the most refined capacities, as the insurers, &c.; and an incredible number of the best merchants in the kingdom sunk under the load, as may appear a little by a bill which once passed the House of Commons, for the relief of merchant-insurers who had suffered by the war with France. If a great many fell, much greater were the number of those who felt a sensible ebb of their fortunes, and with difficulty bore up under the loss of great part of their estates. These, prompted by necessity, rack their wits for new contrivances, new inventions, new trades, stocks, projects, and anything to retrieve the desperate credit of their fortunes. That this is probable to be the cause, will appear further thus: France, though I do not believe all the great outcries we make of their misery and distress, if one half of which be true, they are certainly the best subjects in the world, yet without question has felt its share of the losses and damages of the war; but the poverty there falling chiefly on the poorer sort of people, they have not been so fruitful in inventions and practices of this nature, their genius being quite of another strain. and more capable sort, the first thing a Frenchman flies to in his distress is the army, and he seldom comes back from thence to get an estate by painful industry, but either has his brains knocked out, or makes his fortune there.

As for the gentry

If industry be in any business rewarded with

success, it is in the merchandising part of the world, who indeed may more truly be said to live by their wits than any people whatsoever. All foreign negoce, though to some it is a plain road by the help of custom, yet it is in its beginning all project, contrivance, and invention. Every new voyage the merchant contrives, is a project, and ships are sent from port to port, as markets and merchandises differ, by the help of strange and universal intelligence, wherein some are so exquisite, so swift, and so exact, that a merchant sitting at home in his counting-house, at once converses with all parts of the known world. This, and travel, makes a true-bred merchant the most intelligent man in the world, and consequently the most capable, when urged by necessity, to contrive new ways to live; and from hence, I humbly conceive, may very properly be derived the projects, so much the subject of the present discourse. And to this sort of men it is easy to trace the original of banks, stocks, stockjobbing, assurances, friendly societies, lotteries, and the like.

To this may be added the long annual inquiry in the House of Commons for ways and means, which has been a particular movement to set all the heads of the nation at work; and I appeal, with submission, to the gentlemen of that honourable house, if the greatest part of all the ways and means, out of the common road of land-taxes, polls, and the like, have not been handed to them from the merchant, and in a great measure paid by them too.

However, I offer this but as an essay at the original of this prevailing humour of the people, and as it is probable, so it is also possible to be otherwise, which I submit to future demonstration.

Of the several ways this faculty of projecting have exerted itself, and of the various methods, as the genius of the authors has inclined, I have been a diligent observer, and in most an unconcerned spectator, and, perhaps, have some advan- || tage from thence more easily to discover the faux pas of the actors. If I have given an essay towards anything new, or made discovery to advantage of any contrivance now on foot, all men are at the liberty to make use of the improvement; if any fraud is discovered, as now practised, it is without any particular reflection upon parties or persons.

Projects of the nature I treat about, are doubtless in general of public advantage, as they tend to improvement of trade, and employment of the poor, and the circulation and increase of the public stock of the kingdom; but this is supposed of such as are built on the honest basis of ingenuity and improvement, in which, though I will allow the author to aim primarily at his own advantage, yet with the circumstances of public benefit added.

Wherefore it is necessary to distinguish among the projects of the present times, between the honest and the dishonest.

There are, and that too many, fair pretences of fine discoveries, new inventions, engines, and I know not what, which being advanced in notion, and talked up to great things to be performed when such and such sums of money shall be advanced, and such and such engines are made,

|

have raised the fancies of credulous people to such height, that merely on the shadow of expectation, they have formed companies, chose committees, appointed officers, shares and books, raised great stocks, and cried up an empty notion to that degree, that people have been betrayed to part with their money for shares in a newnothing; and when the inventors have carried on the jest till they have sold all their own inte rest, they leave the cloud to vanish of itself, and the poor purchasers to quarrel with one another and go to law about settlements, transferrings, and some bone or other thrown among them by the subtlety of the author, to lay the blame of the miscarriage upon themselves. Thus the shares at first begin to fall by degrees, and happy is he that sells in time, till, like brass money, it will go at last for nothing at all. So have I seen shares in joint-stocks, patents, engines, and undertakings, blown up by the air of great words, and the name of some man of credit concerned to 1001. for a five hundredth part or share, some more, and at last dwindle away till it has been stock-jobbed down to 10, 12, 9, 87. a share, and at last no buyer; that is, in short, the fine new word for nothing-worth, and many families ruined by the purchase. If I should name linen manu. factures, saltpetre works, copper mines, diving engines, dipping, and the like, for instances of this I should, I believe, do no wrong to truth, or to some persons too visibly guilty.

I might go on upon this subject to expose the frauds and tricks of stock-jobbers, engineers, patentees, committees, with those exchange mountebanks we very properly call brokers, but I have not gall enough for such a work; but as a general rule of caution to those who would not be tricked out of their estates by such pretenders to new inventions, let them observe that all such people who may be suspected of design have assuredly this in their proposal, your money to the author must go before the experiment; and here I could give a very diverting history of a patentmonger, wnose cully was nobody but myself; but I defer it to another occasion.

But this is no reason why invention upon honest foundations, and to fair purposes, should not be encouraged; no, nor why the author of any such fair contrivances should not reap the harvest of his own ingenuity: our acts of parliament for granting patents to first inventors for fourteen years, is a sufficient acknowledgment of the due regard which ought to be had to such as find out anything which may be of public advantage; new discoveries in trade, in arts and mysteries, of manufacturing goods, or improvement. of land, are without question of as great benefit, as any discoveries made in the works of nature by all the academies and royal societies in the world.

There is, it is true, a great difference between new inventions and projects, between improve. ment of manufactures or lands, which tend to the immediate benefit of the public and employing of the poor, and projects framed by subtle heads, with a sort of a deceptio visus and legerdemain, to bring people to run needless and unusual hazards. I grant it, and give a due preference to the first, and yet success has so sanctified some of those other sorts of projects, that it would be

a kind of blasphemy against fortune to disaliow them witness Sir William Phips's voyage to the wreck; it was a mere project, a lottery of a hundred thousand to one odds-a hazard, which, if it had failed, everybody would have been ashamed to have owned themselves concerned in, a voyage that would have been as much ridiculed as Don Quixote's adventure upon the windmill. Bless us! that folks should go three thousand miles to angle in the open sea for pieces of eight! Why, they would have made ballads of it, and the merchants would have said of every unlikely adventure, it was like Phips's wreck-voyage; but it had success, and who reflects upon the project?

Nothing's so partial as the laws of fate,
Erecting blockheads to suppress the great.
Sir Francis Drake the Spanish plate-fleet won,
He had been a pirate if he had got none.

Sir Walter Raleigh strove, but missed the plate, And therefore died a traitor to the state. Endeavour bears a value more or less, Just as 'tis recommended by success: The lucky coxcomb ev'ry man will prize, And prosp'rous actions always pass for wise. reflection as to their honesty, save that there is a However, this sort of projects comes under no kind of honesty a man owes to himself and to his family that prohibits him throwing away his estate in impracticable, improbable adventures; but still some hit even of the most unlikely, of brought home a cargo of silver of near 200,000. which this was one, of Sir William Phips, who sterling, in pieces of eight, fished up out of the open sea, remote from any shore, from an old Spanish ship which had been sunk above forty

years.