now to get the case cleared up; but till it is duly sifted it ought not to be cited, as it has been, as a veracious story. The reaction of mind caused by unfounded tales of supernatural appearance, is injurious in its effects upon the evidences of sacred truth; for careless persons may not, ignorant persons cannot, and ill minded persons will not, separate truth from fiction; and thus Socialists and others confound the events of Holy Writ with the lying vanities of human invention, or the mistakes of human credulity. Such tales ought either not to be told; or if told, the evidence ought to be so given that it may be duly tested.

JASON.

THE GREAT SOUTH SEA BUBBLE, WITH ITS CONTEMPORARY BUBLETS.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

IN looking from the loop holes of my retreat at the busy world, it often seems to me to be upon the verge of some great convulsion, and I can only attribute it to the merciful providence of God, not the wisdom or foresight of man, that it escapes it. The late pecuniary crisis in America might have been highly disastrous in its effects upon England; and so might many other foreign transactions, on account of the intimate union which subsists between Great Britain as a commercial nation and other countries. But our own trading speculations are often indications rather of the excitement of fever than of vigorous health. The crisis of 1826, though it checked, did not extinguish, the thirst for overtrading; and it is surprising that we have escaped a more recent crash. If history were not esteemed an old almanac, salutary cautions might be learned from previous disasters; and especially from the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1716.

The South Sea Company had proposed to pay off the National Debt, by taking it upon themselves and giving their own stock in exchange, which Parliament agreed to. The scheme took so well that their stock rose from £86 to £1100; and their original fund of ten millions became nominally worth one hundred and ten millions; and they opened four new subscriptions which made the total £295,000,000. The directors actually set up this new stock at one thousand per cent.; and yet such was the phrensy of the moment that the shares were sold at two hundred per cent. premium. Upon the reaction, what had been purchased for £1100 fell back to £86; the directors were ruined; and parliament caused their estates to be confiscated to relieve thousands of families whom they had reduced to misery by their proceedings, and also for the same humane purpose remitted more than four millions of money which the insolvent company owed the State.

I will copy a curious passage from Maitland's History of London relative to the subject. The description is quite in the manner of De Foe.

"It is very surprising, that the wicked scheme of French extraction should meet with encouragement here, seeing the very year before it had almost ruined that nation. But what is still more surprising is, that the people of divers other countries, who, not withstanding their having the direful effects of this destructive sebeme before their eyes, and, as it were, tainted with our frenzy, begun to court

their destruction, by setting on foot the like projects: which gives room to suspect, that those destructive and fatal transactions were rather the result of an epidemical distemper, than that of choice; seeing that the wisest and best of men were the greatest sufferers; many of the nobility, and persons of the greatest distinction, undone, and obliged to walk on foot; while others, who the year before could hardly purchase a dinner, were exalted in their coaches and fine equipages, and possessed of enormous estates. And such a scene of misery appeared among traders, that it was almost become unfashionable not to be a bankrupt. And, soon after, this direful catastrophe was attended with such a number of self murders, as no age can parallel.

"And as if this wicked project had not of itself been sufficient to ruin both city and country, there were at the same time a vast number of other villanous projects set on foot, purely calculated to enrich the roguish projectors, at the expense of the middling and poorer sort of people, who were not capable of reaching the South Sea traffic. Those vile schemes were justly denominated Bubbles, as consisting of nothing but air, and scraps of paper. For the suppressing of those fraudulent and illegal practices, application was made (in the King's absence in his German dominions) to the Lords Justices, who came to the following resolution. Their Excellencies the Lords Justice in council, taking into consideration the many inconveniences arising to the public, from several projects set on foot for raising of joint stocks for various purposes; and that a great many of his Majesty's subjects have been drawn into part with their money, on pretence of assurances that their petitions, for patents and charters to enable them to carry on the same, would be granted: to prevent such impositions, their Excellencies, this day, ordered the said several petitions, together with such reports from the Board of Trade, and from his Majesty's Attorney and SolicitorGeneral, as had been obtained thereon, to be laid before them; and, after mature consideration thereof, were pleased, by advice of his Majesty's Privy-Council, to order that the said petitions be dismissed, which are as followeth.'

The projects thus disallowed were-Royal English fishery; national fishery; whale fishery to Greenland; another to Davis's Straits; Greenland trade; building or buying ships to let or freight; sowing hemp and flax; making sail-cloth; raising madder; making sailcloth and fine holland; the same and silk and cotton manufactures ; fire assurance; the same; trading to Brunswick; importing German timber; salt-work; and making snuff in Virginia.

Some of these were good projects; but in consequence of the former extravagances, prejudice prevailed, and the good shared the fate of the evil. Maitland mentions the following as being carried on without patents or charters; and in the mention of these also, valuable projects are confounded with those which were unsafe or chimerical. Some are evidently satirical; and the true and the fictitious are so blended, that it is not clear, respecting several, whether the specification is genuine or otherwise. Private adventurers are also mixed up with joint-stock companies; and the whole is one mass of confusion. It is thus at all times; for ignorant persons cannot distinguish between a scheme founded upon solid principles and the wildest extravagance; thus classing "making iron and steel with pit-coals," instead of charcoal as formerly, which led the way, more than perhaps any other discovery of science, to the modern commercial greatness of England, with projects for an "Arcadian colony," " perpetual motion," and "making quicksilver malleable." The following is the list:

American fishery; British alum-works; Santa Cruz settlement; Westley's actions; Blane's society; Tortola settlement; importing beaver; bottomry; inoffensively cleansing cespools; supplying London with sea-coal; clothing trade; supplying London with cattle; breeding cattle; insuring and improving children's fortunes; improving certa in manufactures; entering goods; furnishing London with hay;

purchasing lands to build on; lending money on interest; purchasing lead mines; dealing in lace; purchasing fenny lands; raising hemp: manuring land; drying malt by hot air; restoring Morison's haven ; buying naval stores; pensions to widows; trading to the Oroonoko; making pasteboard; improving paper; Colchester baize; ballast society; Bahama Islands; lending on bottomry; grand dispensary; improving land in Essex; royal fishery; fishpool; draining fens ; making bottles; making looking glass; Globe permits; building houses; encouraging the breed of horses; foundling hospital; discovering gold mines; importing Swedish iron; assurance against thieves; improving land; trading in hair; sinking pits for melting lead; insuring masters from losses by servants; lending on government security; muslin machine; importing pitch from Scotland; Nova Britannica Society; making rape oil; corn trade: Irish sail-cloth; Arcadian colony; Newcastle coal trade; making china ware; furnishing funerals; Orkney fishery; coral fishery; flying engine; improving gardens; society for freeholders; making sail cloth; importing holland; insuring horses; feeding hogs; bleaching hair; making steel; making iron and steel with pit coals; improving land in Flintshire; buying, selling, and letting land; trading in iron; national permits; public fishery; life insurance; improving malt liquors; making pasteboards; purchasing lands in Pennsylvania; curing gout and stone; making oil of poppies; making quicksilver malleable; salt pans in Holy Island; improving soap; improving silk; bleaching sugar; making stockings; improving tin mines; trading in tobacco with Sweden; curing tobacco; establishing woollen manufacture in the North of England; furnishing merchants with watches insurance against small-pox; air-pump for the brain; insurance against divorces; butter from beech-trees; making radish-oil; importing oils; paving London; making Manchester stuffs; extracting silver from lead; boiling rock salt; making salt petre; erecting turnpikes; improving tillage; importing timber from Wales; supplying Deal with water; importing walnut tree from Virginia; perpetual motion; engine to remove the South Sea-house to Bedlam; making deal boards of sawdust; making the river Douglas navigable; improving the Thanet; insuring seamen's wages; making Joppa soap; fitting out ships against pirates; ameliorating oil; discounting seamen's tickets; making sail-cloth in Ireland; Temple mills; supplying Liverpool with water; exporting woollen goods for brass; japanning shoes ; casting nativities.

;

These details are sufficiently curious to entertain the popular reader; but my object in noticing the subject was not amusement but profit. The spirit of commercial speculation is as rife among us at the present moment as in the time of the South Sea mania, and too many of the servants of Christ have been engulfed in the stream. Instead of waking in the morning with tranquillity, and praying with contented faith to their heavenly Father, in the quiet and diligent discharge of their worldly occupation, to give them that day their daily bread; they are constantly in a state of feverish anxiety; they cannot rest till they have seen the price of stocks, and the market rate of interest, and the rise and fall of rail-road shares: and have read and digested the news of the day. Is this frame of mind desirable, or warrantable, in one who professes to be a pilgrim and stranger upon earth? Alas, is it not essentially worldly and soul-destroying, and opposed to prayer, to watchfulness, and spirituality of mind.

There is nothing unlawful in purchasing joint-stock shares in wellconsidered and useful undertakings: it is an allowable mode of improving property, and providing things honest in the sight of all men; but the spirit of worldly speculation is opposed to the Gospel in its very essence; and they that " will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition."

But if any Christian do not see the matter distinctly at first as a question of principle, let him begin with viewing it as one of prudence. Let him think of the disappointment, loss, and misery occa sioned by the South Sea speculation, which only exhibited on a large scale what is passing daily in families in consequence of the failure of rash and improvident commercial enterprizes. The evil is not confined to ordinary traffic: it pervades even the most sacred institutions. An amiable, pious, and gentle-tempered minister, not previously given to filthy lucre, was ruined in mind and health, in his family comfort and his spiritual and pastoral character, by having become entangled in an exciting pew-rent speculation. If the believer lived up to his high character and privileges, he would not be a quietist, because he would consider that he had duties to discharge as well as a cross to bear: but still less would he be "overcharged with the cares of this world," or be found trying to reconcile God and

mammon.

A STANDER-BY.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

[WE copy the following from "Sacred Poems by the late Sir Robert Grant," published by his brother, Lord Glenelg. The pieces are but twelve in number, and would not fill above three or four closely-printed pages of a magazine; but they are made to occupy nearly forty pages of elegant type and paper, apparently for presentation. Lord Glenelg says, "Many of them have already appeared in print, either in periodical publications, or in collections of sacred poetry: but a few are now published for the first time." We are not aware of any other periodical publication than our own in which any of them originally appeared. The first in the collection—the admirable hymn "When gathering clouds "—was sent by the author for insertion in our volume for 1806, under the signature of E.-Y. D. R.; and he sent an improved edition for our volume for 1812, under the same signature. The beautiful lines on the Litany, "Saviour, when in dust to Thee," and we believe some others, were inserted without signature. We have noticed the signature, because there is in our volume for 1806 another poem with the above signature, intitled "To a friend gathering wild flowers," which we pointed out to Lord Glenelg when he was collecting his brother's pieces; but none of the family had ever seen the lines, and his Lordship has omitted them, either as thinking them apocryphal, or not particularly worth preserving. They are not equal to our departed correspondent's other pieces; though the signature, which is specific, seems to determine them to his pen, and they were inserted the very month after "When gathering clouds." Lord Glenelg gives this last composition nearly as it appeared in our vo

lume for 1812; but some compilations of hymns, we believe, have the readings of 1806. We are not sure that the following reading in the first copy was not the best :

1812, and reprint.

Still He who once vouchsafed to bear
The sickening anguish of despair,
Shall sweetly soothe, shall gently dry
The throbbing heart, the streaming eye.

The following was probably altered to avoid an ambiguity:

We have noticed these various readings to give the compilers of hymn-books their choice. We now proceed to copy a few pieces which we do not recollect having printed before.]

HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST.

PSALM XLIX