AN ESSAY ON ENGLISH BUBBLES. BY THOMAS HOPE, ESQ.

     
     
           To the Right Reverend, Right Honourable, and Right Worshipful, and
     to the Reverend, Honourable, and Worshipful, &c. Company of
     Stockjobbers; whether Honest or Dishonest, Pious or Impious, Wise
     or Otherwise, Male or Female, Young or Old, One with another, who
     have suffered Depredation by the late Bubbles: Greeting.
      Having received the following scheme from Dublin, I give you the earliest notice, how you may retrieve the DECUS ET TUTAMEN,[23] which you have sacrificed by permits in bubbles. This project is founded on a Parliamentary security, besides, the devil is in it, if it can fail, since a dignitary of the Church[24] is at the head on't. Therefore you, who have subscribed to the stocking insurance, and are out at the heels, may soon appear tight about the legs. You, who encouraged the hemp manufacture, may leave the halter to rogues, and prevent the odium of felo de se. Medicinal virtues are here to be had without the expense and hazard of a dispensary: You may sleep without dreaming of bottles at your tail, and a looking-glass shall not affright you; and since the glass bubble proved as brittle as its ware, and broke together with itself the hopes of its proprietors, they may make themselves whole by subscribing to our new fund.
      Here indeed may be made three very grave objections, by incredulous interested priests, ambitious citizens, and scrupulous statesmen. The stocking manufactory gentlemen don't know how swearing can bring 'em to any probability of covering their legs anew, unless it be by the means of a pair of stocks: That the hemp-snared men apprehend, that such an encouragement for oaths can tend to no other advancement, promotion, and exaltation of their persons, than that of the gallows: The late old ordinary, Paul,[25] having grown grey in the habit of making this accurate observation in every month's Session-Paper, “That swearing had as great a hand in the suspension of every living soul under his cure, as Sabbath-breaking itself;” and that the glass-bubble-men cannot, for their lives, with the best pair of spectacles, that is the only thing left neat and whole, out of all their wares, see how they shall make anything out of this his oath-project, supposing he should even confirm by one its goodness: An oath being, as they say, as brittle as glass, and only made to be broken.
      But those incredulous priests shall not go without an answer, that will, I am sure, induce them to place a great confidence in the benefit arising from Christians, who damn themselves every hour of the day. For while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection against the project, is a concluding argument of the constancy and solidity of their sure gain by it; a never-failing argument, as he tells us, among the brethren of his cloth.
      The ambitious citizens, who from being plunged deep in the wealthy whirlpool of the South-Sea, are in hopes of rising to such seats of fortune and dignity, as would best suit with their mounting and aspiring hopes, may imagine that this new fund, in the sister nation, may prove a rival to theirs; and, by drawing off a multitude of subscribers, will, if it makes a flood in Ireland, cause an ebb in England. But it may be answered, that, though our author avers, that this fund will vie with the South-Sea, yet it will not clash with it. On the contrary, the subscribers to this must wish the increase of the South-Sea, (so far from being its rival); because the multitude of people raised by it, who were plain-speakers, as they were plain-dealers before, must learn to swear, in order to become their clothes, and to be gentlemen à la mode; while those that are ruined, I mean Job'd by it, will dismiss the patience of their old pattern, swear at their condition, and curse their Maker in their distress; and so the increase of that English fund will be demonstratively an ample augmentation of the Irish one: So far will it be from being rivalled by it, so that each of them may subscribe to a fund they have their own security for augmenting.
      The scrupulous statesmen (for we know that statesmen are usually very scrupulous) may object against having this project secured by votes in Parliament; by reason, as they may deem it, in their great wisdom, an impious project; and that therefore so illustrious an assembly, as the Irish parliament, ought, by no means, according to the opinion of a Christian statesman, to be concerned in supporting an impious thing in the world. The way that some may take to prove it impious, is, because it will tend highly to the interest of swearing.—But this I take to be plain downright sophistry, and playing upon words: If this be called the Swearing project, or the Oath-act, the increase of swearing will be very much for the benefit and interest of swearing, (i.e.) to the subscribers in the fund to be raised by this fruitful Swearing-act, if it should be so called; but not to the swearers themselves, who are to pay for it: So that it will be, according to this distinction, piously indeed an act for a benefit to mankind, from swearing, not impiously, a benefit in swearing: So that I think that argument entirely answered and defeated. Far be it from the Dean to have entered into so unchristian a project, as this had been, so considered. But then these politicians (being generally, as the world knows, mighty tender of conscience) may raise these new doubts, fears, and scruples, viz. that it will however cause the subscribers to wish, in their minds, for many oaths to fly about, which is a heinous crime, and to lay stratagems to try the patience of men of all sorts, to put them upon the swearing strain, in order to bring grist to their own mill, which is a crime still more enormous; and that therefore, for fear of these evil consequences, the passing of such an act is not consistent with the really extraordinary and tender conscience of a true modern politician. But in answer to this, I think I can plead the strongest plea in nature, and that is called precedent, I think; which I take thus from the South-Sea: One man, by the very nature of that subscription, must naturally pray for the temporal damnation of another man in his fortune, in order for gaining his own salvation in it; yea, even though he knows the other man's temporal damnation would be the cause of his eternal, by his swearing and despairing. Neither do I think this in casuistry and sin, because the swearing, undone man is a free agent, and can choose whether he will swear or no, anybody's wishes whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding: And in politics I am sure it is even a Machiavellian holy maxim, “That some men should be ruined for the good of others.” Thus I think I have answered all the objections that can be brought against this project's coming to perfection, and proved it to be convenient for the state, of interest to the Protestant church, and consonant with Christianity, nay, with the very scruples of modern, squeamish statesmen.
      To conclude: The laudable author of this project squares the measures of it so much according to the scripture rule, it may reasonably be presumed, that all good Christians in England will come as fast into the subscriptions for his encouragement, as they have already done throughout the kingdom of Ireland. For what greater proof could this author give of his Christianity, than, for bringing about this Swearing-act, charitably to part with his coat, and sit starving in a very thin waistcoat in his garret, to do the corporal virtues of feeding and clothing the poor, and raising them from the cottage to the palace, by punishing the vices of the rich. What more could have been done even in the primitive times!
                           THOMAS HOPE.
        From my House in St. Faith's Parish,
      London, August 10, 1720.
      P.S.—For the benefit of the author, application may be made to me at the Tilt-Yard Coffee-house, Whitehall.