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MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS
BY CHARLES MACKAY
AUTHOR OF
"THE THAMES AND ITS TRIBUTARIES,"
"THE HOPE OF THE WORLD," ETC.
"Il est bon de connaitre les delires de l'esprit humain.
Chaque people a ses folies plus ou moins grossieres."
MILLOT
VOL I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY.
1841.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME
THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE
THE TULIPOMANIA
RELICS
MODERN PROPHECIES
POPULAR ADMIRATION FOR GREAT THIEVES
INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND RELIGION ON THE HAIR AND BEARD
DUELS AND 0RDEALS
THE LOVE OF THE MARVELOUS AND THE DISBELIEF OF THE TRUE
POPULAR FOLLIES IN GREAT CITIES
THE O. P. MANIA
THE THUGS, OR PHANSIGARS
NATIONAL DELUSIONS.
N'en deplaise a ces fous nommes sages de Grece;
En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgre tous leurs soins,
Ne different entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
BOILEAU.
In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals,
they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of
excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find
that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and
go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously
impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is
caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one
nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a
fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed
upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses
until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and
tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of
Europe its population lost their wits about the Sepulchre of Jesus,
and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land: another age went
mad for fear of the Devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of
victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many
became crazed on the subject of the Philosopher's Stone, and committed
follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a
venial offence in very many countries of Europe to destroy an enemy by
slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a
man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of
gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until
poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some
delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages,
flourishing as widely among civilized and polished nations as among
the early barbarians with whom they originated, -- that of duelling, for
instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which
seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate entirely from the
popular mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of
multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers,
and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.
To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the
object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in
herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only
recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
In the present state of civilization, society has often shown
itself very prone to run a career of folly from the last-mentioned
cases. This infatuation has seized upon whole nations in a most
extraordinary manner. France, with her Mississippi madness, set the
first great example, and was very soon imitated by England with her
South Sea Bubble. At an earlier period, Holland made herself still
more ridiculous in the eyes of the world, by the frenzy which came
over her people for the love of Tulips. Melancholy as all these
delusions were in their ultimate results, their history is most
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