So cried the experimentalists of 1825. And it was done. Here and there a warning voice was raised. Many a high-spirited, but ruined and broken-hearted man knows now, but too well, how wise that warning

was.

The plague, the cholera, the black death, the sweating sickness, are epidemics that have periodically devastated the earth. But mankind are subject to moral as well as physical epidemics. Ever and anon there stalk abroad palpable delusions that attack and prostrate the reason of whole nations. The wisest are sometimes the first victims. Such epidemics have been seen in our own time. They were no novelties, and as they were not the first, will doubtless not be the last.

The tulipomania broke out in Holland about 1634, and before 1637 had spread over a large part of Europe. The cultivation of the tulip had been carried to great perfection in Holland. Many of the roots were valuable. People found that by buying up particular sorts they could sell them again at very high prices. Then came the fever of speculation. Tulips

rose to such a price, that for a single root of a sort called the Viceroy were given, we are told, 2 lasts of wheat, 4 lasts of rye, 4 fat oxen, 3 fat swine, 12 fat sheep, 2 hogsheads of wine, 4 tuns of beer, 2 tuns of butter, 1000 pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver beaker. Nay, Joint Stock Companies were formed, holding undivided shares in one root. People bought and sold tulips that never existed; and were known by both buyer and seller not to exist. As now, on the Stock Exchange, there are the different manœuvres of putting on stock, differences, continuations, backwardations; so it was then, with tulip roots. It is said, that in three years ten millions of Dutch money thus changed hands in a single town in Holland. At length the bubble broke and all the dealers were ruined. No, not all. In every delusion of this kind, long-headed knaves stand by, urge on the game, sell out in time, sweep the stakes into their pouch, and leave the swindled public to gape and stare at one another.

After the lapse of a little more than eighty years, the Mississippi and South Sea schemes broke out in France and England. South Sea stock was bought and sold till the price was driven up to 1000. Bubble companies of the most absurd description were eagerly embraced as lucrative speculations or profitable investments. Plodding industry was despised by a nation of gamblers. Sages of the law, dignitaries of church, the principal nobility, male and female, nay, the Royal

family and the Prince of Wales himself, were swept into the devouring whirlpool of Capel Court. Besides losing their venture, it was found that by becoming partners, many had risked their all. When at last the crash came, multitudes were ruined in fortune and character, and public credit itself was shaken.

This was the very crisis for wise legislation. Events had developed a mischief. Experience had demonstrated, amongst other things, that the unlicensed power to create Joint Stock Companies, not only nourished a spirit of gambling, but involved unwary purchasers and their innocent families, in the awful liabilities of partnership.

Accordingly, parliament legislated by the light of experience, and in 1719, the Bubble Act was passed, putting a stop to Joint Stock Companies without the license of Parliament or the Crown.

The mischief was kept under for little more than a century. But in 1825, Parliament was persuaded by the disciples of the let-alone system, (which superstition was then much more accredited than it is now,) to repeal the Bubble Act. In 1826 an inundation of Joint Stock schemes exceeded anything that had been ever before known. A fearful revulsion again involved multitudes in ruin.

In 1845 the same gambling returned, and the same destruction.

And ever since 1825 how many instances have been continually occurring of men of property unwarily pur

chasing, or accepting as a gift or bequest, or taking for the sake of encouraging a useful enterprize, a share or two in an unincorporated Joint Stock Bank, or other trading, or manufacturing company. A lawyer indeed, would have told them that they ought not to touch such a thing with a pair of tongs. But mankind are not, and cannot be skilled in the law, and hate those that are. Suddenly they find themselves brought in as partners, and stript of their last acre and last shilling. Indeed, it is in vain that men abstain. An executor, far too prudent to hold shares in an unincorporated Joint Stock Company, administers an estate and pays the legacies. He afterwards finds that a share which his testator once held in a joint stock undertaking, brings on the estate large liabilities. He has committed a devastavit by paying legacies, and has to that extent, become himself personally liable for the debts of a company, of whose very existence he was ignorant.

'Oh,' say the partisans of the let-alone system, men will learn wisdom by experience.' Alas, suppose they did; wisdom comes too late, when a man is ruined. And what say you to his children? Up rises another and another generation to be, like their fathers, ruined first, and taught afterwards. You might, on the same principle, repeal all the laws against gaming. Indeed the Bubble Act was directed against the most ruinous sort of gaming.

'What?' it will be said, are there to be no Joint

Stock Companies?' Quite the contrary. There are to be more than there are now; and safer and better. Association is a powerful engine for increasing national wealth, but like all other human institutions, it requires regulation and control.

These observations do not touch companies incorporated by Act of Parliament, or Royal Charter. Such Companies have a public sanction, which is some security, that their objects are good, and of such magnitude or public interest as to justify the association of many capitals. A person subscribing to incorporated companies, is only liable to the extent of his subscription. He is safe.

But they are levelled at unincorporated Joint Stock Companies. Every man that holds even a fractional part of a small share, an interest to the value of a shilling, (though he has no control over the entrance of partners into the firm and very little over the management,) is here personally liable to every creditor of the concern, down to his last farthing. Many of such companies really are what the Bubble Act in terms made them, public nuisances, and all of them are subject to become so.

Unincorporated Joint Stock Companies are of two sorts; those that really answer, and those that do not.

Those that really answer, would answer just as well with a limited liability in the shareholders. Perhaps much better, for more men of capital and judgment would then belong to them. Those that do not answer,