An Essay Upon Projects

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 -