by Daniel Defoe
composition; for which I refer to the engine itself, to be seen in
every stocking-weaver's garret.
I shall trace the original of the projecting humour that now reigns
no farther back than the year 1680, dating its birth as a monster
then, though by times it had indeed something of life in the time of
the late civil war. I allow, no age has been altogether without
something of this nature, and some very happy projects are left to
us as a taste of their success; as the water-houses for supplying of
the city of London with water, and, since that, the New River--both
very considerable undertakings, and perfect projects, adventured on
the risk of success. In the reign of King Charles I. infinite
projects were set on foot for raising money without a Parliament:
oppressing by monopolies and privy seals; but these are excluded our
scheme as irregularities, for thus the French are as fruitful in
projects as we; and these are rather stratagems than projects.
After the Fire of London the contrivance of an engine to quench
fires was a project the author was said to get well by, and we have
found to be very useful. But about the year 1680 began the art and
mystery of projecting to creep into the world. Prince Rupert, uncle
to King Charles II., gave great encouragement to that part of it
that respects engines and mechanical motions; and Bishop Wilkins
added as much of the theory to it as writing a book could do. The
prince has left us a metal called by his name; and the first project
upon that was, as I remember, casting of guns of that metal and
boring them--done both by a peculiar method of his own, and which
died with him, to the great loss of the undertaker, who to that
purpose had, with no small charge, erected a water-mill at Hackney
Marsh, known by the name of the Temple Mill, which mill very happily
performed all parts of the work; and I have seen some of those guns
on board the Royal Charles, a first-rate ship, being of a reddish
colour, different either from brass or copper. I have heard some
reasons of state assigned why that project was not permitted to go
forward; but I omit them, because I have no good authority for them.
After this we saw a floating-machine, to be wrought with horses, for
the towing of great ships both against wind and tide; and another
for the raising of ballast, which, as unperforming engines, had the
honour of being made, exposed, tried, and laid by before the prince
died.
If thus we introduce it into the world under the conduct of that
prince, when he died it was left a hopeless brat, and had hardly any
hand to own it, till the wreck-voyage before noted, performed so
happily by Captain Phips, afterwards Sir William, whose strange
performance set a great many heads on work to contrive something for
themselves. He was immediately followed by my Lord Mordant, Sir
John Narborough, and others from several parts, whose success made
them soon weary of the work.
The project of the Penny Post, so well known and still practised, I
cannot omit, nor the contriver, Mr. Dockwra, who has had the honour
to have the injury done him in that affair repaired in some measure
by the public justice of the Parliament. And, the experiment
proving it to be a noble and useful design, the author must be
remembered, wherever mention is made of that affair, to his very
great reputation.
It was, no question, a great hardship for a man to be master of so
fine a thought, that had both the essential ends of a project in it
(public good and private want ), and that the public should reap the
benefit and the author be left out; the injustice of which, no
doubt, discouraged many a good design. But since an alteration in
public circumstances has recovered the lost attribute of justice,
the like is not to be feared. And Mr. Dockwra has had the
satisfaction to see the former injury disowned, and an honourable
return made, even by them who did not the injury, in bare respect to
his ingenuity.
A while before this several people, under the patronage of some
great persons, had engaged in planting of foreign colonies (as
William Penn, the Lord Shaftesbury, Dr. Cox, and others) in
Pennsylvania, Carolina, East and West Jersey, and the like places,
which I do not call projects, because it was only prosecuting what
had been formerly begun. But here began the forming of public
joint-stocks, which, together with the East India, African, and
Hudson's Bay Companies, before established, begot a new trade, which
we call by a new name stock-jobbing, which was at first only the
simple occasional transferring of interest and shares from one to
another, as persons alienated their estates; but by the industry of
the Exchange brokers, who got the business into their hands, it
became a trade, and one perhaps managed with the greatest intrigue,
artifice, and trick that ever anything that appeared with a face of
honesty could be handled with; for while the brokers held the box,
they made the whole Exchange the gamesters, and raised and lowered
the prices of stocks as they pleased, and always had both buyers and
sellers who stood ready innocently to commit their money to the
mercy of their mercenary tongues. This upstart of a trade, having
tasted the sweetness of success which generally attends a novel
proposal, introduces the illegitimate wandering object I speak of,
as a proper engine to find work for the brokers. Thus stock-jobbing
nursed projecting, and projecting, in return, has very diligently
pimped for its foster-parent, till both are arrived to be public
grievances, and indeed are now almost grown scandalous.
OF PROJECTORS.
Man is the worst of all God's creatures to shift for himself; no
other animal is ever starved to death; nature without has provided
them both food and clothes, and nature within has placed an instinct
that never fails to direct them to proper means for a supply; but
man must either work or starve, slave or die. He has indeed reason
given him to direct him, and few who follow the dictates of that
reason come to such unhappy exigences; but when by the errors of a
man's youth he has reduced himself to such a degree of distress as
to be absolutely without three things--money, friends, and health--
he dies in a ditch, or in some worse place, a hospital.
Ten thousand ways there are to bring a man to this, and but very few
to bring him out again.
Death is the universal deliverer, and therefore some who want
courage to bear what they see before them, hang themselves for fear;
for certainly self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the
highest extreme.
Others break the bounds of laws to satisfy that general law of
nature, and turn open thieves, house-breakers, highwaymen, clippers,
coiners, &c., till they run the length of the gallows, and get a
deliverance the nearest way at St. Tyburn.
Others, being masters of more cunning than their neighbours, turn
their thoughts to private metho
ds of trick and cheat, a modern way
of thieving every jot as criminal, and in some degree worse than the
other, by which honest men are gulled with fair pretences to part
from their money, and then left to take their course with the
author, who skulks behind the curtain of a protection, or in the
Mint or Friars, and bids defiance as well to honesty as the law.
Others, yet urged by the same necessity, turn their thoughts to
honest invention, founded upon the platform of ingenuity and
integrity.
These two last sorts are those we call projectors; and as there was
always more geese than swans, the number of the latter are very
inconsiderable in comparison of the former; and as the greater
number denominates the less, the just contempt we have of the former
sort bespatters the other, who, like cuckolds, bear the reproach of
other people's crimes.
A mere projector, then, is a contemptible thing, driven by his own
desperate fortune to such a strait that he must be delivered by a
miracle, or starve; and when he has beat his brains for some such
miracle in vain, he finds no remedy but to paint up some bauble or
other, as players make puppets talk big, to show like a strange
thing, and then cry it up for a new invention, gets a patent for it,
divides it into shares, and they must be sold. Ways and means are
not wanting to swell the new whim to a vast magnitude; thousands and
hundreds of thousands are the least of his discourse, and sometimes
millions, till the ambition of some honest coxcomb is wheedled to
part with his money for it, and then (nascitur ridiculus mus) the
adventurer is left to carry on the project, and the projector laughs
at him. The diver shall walk at the bottom of the Thames, the
saltpetre maker shall build Tom T-d's pond into houses, the
engineers build models and windmills to draw water, till funds are
raised to carry it on by men who have more money than brains, and
then good-night patent and invention; the projector has done his
business and is gone.
But the honest projector is he who, having by fair and plain
principles of sense, honesty, and ingenuity brought any contrivance
to a suitable perfection, makes out what he pretends to, picks
nobody's pocket, puts his project in execution, and contents himself
with the real produce as the profit of his invention.
OF BANKS.
Banks, without question, if rightly managed are, or may be, of great
advantage, especially to a trading people, as the English are; and,
among many others, this is one particular case in which that benefit
appears: that they bring down the interest of money, and take from
the goldsmiths, scriveners, and others, who have command of running
cash, their most delicious trade of making advantage of the
necessities of the merchant in extravagant discounts and premiums
for advance of money, when either large customs or foreign
remittances call for disbursements beyond his common ability; for by
the easiness of terms on which the merchant may have money, he is
encouraged to venture further in trade than otherwise he would do.
Not but that there are other great advantages a Royal Bank might
procure in this kingdom, as has been seen in part by this; as
advancing money to the Exchequer upon Parliamentary funds and
securities, by which in time of a war our preparations for any
expedition need not be in danger of miscarriage for want of money,
though the taxes raised be not speedily paid, nor the Exchequer
burthened with the excessive interests paid in former reigns upon
anticipations of the revenue; landed men might be supplied with
moneys upon securities on easier terms, which would prevent the loss
of multitudes of estates, now ruined and devoured by insolent and
merciless mortgagees, and the like. But now we unhappily see a
Royal Bank established by Act of Parliament, and another with a
large fund upon the Orphans' stock; and yet these advantages, or
others, which we expected, not answered, though the pretensions in
both have not been wanting at such time as they found it needful to
introduce themselves into public esteem, by giving out prints of
what they were rather able to do than really intended to practise.
So that our having two banks at this time settled, and more
erecting, has not yet been able to reduce the interest of money, not
because the nature and foundation of their constitution does not
tend towards it, but because, finding their hands full of better
business, they are wiser than by being slaves to old obsolete
proposals to lose the advantage of the great improvement they can
make of their stock.
This, however, does not at all reflect on the nature of a bank, nor
of the benefit it would be to the public trading part of the
kingdom, whatever it may seem to do on the practice of the present.
We find four or five banks now in view to be settled. I confess I
expect no more from those to come than we have found from the past,
and I think I make no broach on either my charity or good manners in
saying so; and I reflect not upon any of the banks that are or shall
be established for not doing what I mention, but for making such
publications of what they would do. I cannot think any man had
expected the Royal Bank should lend money on mortgages at 4 per
cent. (nor was it much the better for them to make publication they
would do so from the beginning of January next after their
settlement), since to this day, as I am informed, they have not lent
one farthing in that manner.
Our banks are indeed nothing but so many goldsmiths' shops, where
the credit being high (and the directors as high) people lodge their
money; and they--the directors, I mean--make their advantage of it.
If you lay it at demand, they allow you nothing; if at time, 3 per
cent.; and so would any goldsmith in Lombard Street have done
before. But the very banks themselves are so awkward in lending, so
strict, so tedious, so inquisitive, and withal so public in their
taking securities, that men who are anything tender won't go to
them; and so the easiness of borrowing money, so much designed, is
defeated. For here is a private interest to be made, though it be a
public one; and, in short, it is only a great trade carried on for
the private gain of a few concerned in the original stock; and
though we are to hope for great things, because they have promised
them, yet they are all future that we know of.
And yet all this while a bank might be very beneficial to this
kingdom; and this might be so, if either their own ingenuity or
public authority would oblige them to take the public good into
equal concern with their private interest.
To explain what I mean; banks, being established by public
authority, ought also, as all public things are, to be under
limitations and restrictions from that authority; and those
limitations being regulated with a proper regard to the ease of
trade in general, and the improvement of the stock in particul
ar,
would make a bank a useful, profitable thing indeed.
First, a bank ought to be of a magnitude proportioned to the trade
of the country it is in, which this bank is so far from that it is
no more to the whole than the least goldsmith's cash in Lombard
Street is to the bank, from whence it comes to pass that already
more banks are contriving. And I question not but banks in London
will ere long be as frequent as lotteries; the consequence of which,
in all probability, will be the diminishing their reputation, or a
civil war with one another. It is true, the Bank of England has a
capital stock; but yet, was that stock wholly clear of the public
concern of the Government, it is not above a fifth part of what
would be necessary to manage the whole business of the town--which
it ought, though not to do, at least to be able to do. And I
suppose I may venture to say above one-half of the stock of the
present bank is taken up in the affairs of the Exchequer.
I suppose nobody will take this discourse for an invective against
the Bank of England. I believe it is a very good fund, a very
useful one, and a very profitable one. It has been useful to the
Government, and it is profitable to the proprietors; and the
establishing it at such a juncture, when our enemies were making
great boasts of our poverty and want of money, was a particular
glory to our nation, and the city in particular. That when the
Paris Gazette informed the world that the Parliament had indeed
given the king grants for raising money in funds to be paid in
remote years, but money was so scarce that no anticipations could be
procured; that just then, besides three millions paid into the
Exchequer that spring on other taxes by way of advance, there was an
overplus-stock to be found of 1,200,000 pounds sterling, or (to make
it speak French) of above fifteen millions, which was all paid
voluntarily into the Exchequer. Besides this, I believe the present
Bank of England has been very useful to the Exchequer, and to supply
the king with remittances for the payment of the army in Flanders,
which has also, by the way, been very profitable to itself. But
still this bank is not of that bulk that the business done here
requires, nor is it able, with all the stock it has, to procure the
great proposed benefit, the lowering the interest of money: whereas
all foreign banks absolutely govern the interest, both at Amsterdam,
Genoa, and other places. And this defect I conceive the
multiplicity of banks cannot supply, unless a perfect understanding
could be secured between them.
To remedy this defect, several methods might be proposed. Some I
shall take the freedom to hint at:-
First, that the present bank increase their stock to at least five
millions sterling, to be settled as they are already, with some
small limitations to make the methods more beneficial.
Five millions sterling is an immense sum; to which add the credit of
their cash, which would supply them with all the overplus-money in
the town, and probably might amount to half as much more; and then
the credit of running bills, which by circulating would, no
question, be an equivalent to the other half: so that in stock,
credit, and bank-bills the balance of their cash would be always ten
millions sterling--a sum that everybody who can talk of does not
understand.
But then to find business for all this stock, which, though it be a
strange thing to think of, is nevertheless easy when it comes to be
examined. And first for the business; this bank should enlarge the
number of their directors, as they do of their stock, and should
then establish several sub-committees, composed of their own
members, who should have the directing of several offices relating
to the distinct sorts of business they referred to, to be overruled
and governed by the governor and directors in a body, but to have a
conclusive power as to contracts. Of these there should be -
