A Voyage to Cacklogallinia | Page 2

up
an empty Notion to that degree that People have been betray'd to part
with their Money for Shares in a New-Nothing."
Of the many speculative schemes of the early eighteenth century, none
is better known than the "South Sea Bubble." After a long period
during which English trade with the Spanish West Indies was carried
on by subterfuge, an Act of Parliament in 1710 incorporated into a
joint-stock company the state creditors, upon the basis of their loan of
ten million pounds to the Government and conferred upon them the
monopoly of the English trade with the Indies. In spite of these

advantages, however, the South Sea Company found itself so hampered
and limited in credit that it offered to convert the national debt into a
"single redeemable obligation" to the company in return for a
monopoly of British foreign trade outside England. The immediate and
spectacular effect of that offer is reflected in the many descriptions,
both serious and satiric, of an era of speculation which to many
generations might seem incredible--though not to this generation which
has itself lived through an orgy of speculation.
Clearly the South Sea Bubble, which reached its climax in 1720, was
the chief source of Captain Samuel Brunt's satire, which has an
important place in the minor literature called forth by the wild
speculation connected with the Bubble.[1] If the "Projects" proposed to
Captain Brunt[2] seem extreme to any modern reader, let him turn to
the list of "bubbles," still accessible in many places.[3] Nothing in
Brunt is so fantastic as many of the actual schemes suggested and acted
upon in the eighteenth century. The possibility of extracting gold from
the mountains of the moon is no more fanciful than several of the
proposals seriously received by Englishmen under the spell of
speculation. As in the kingdom of Cacklogallinia, so in London, men
mortgaged their homes and women sold their jewels [4] in order to
purchase shares in wildcat companies, born one day, only to die the
next. As the anonymous author of one of many South Sea Ballads
wrote in his "Merry Remarks upon Exchange Alley Bubbles":
Our greatest ladies hither come, And ply in chariots daily; Oft pawn
their jewels for a sum To venture in the Alley.
The meteoric rise in the price of shares in the moon-mountain project
of the Cacklogallinians is no greater than the actual rise in prices of
shares during the South Sea Bubble, when, between April and July,
1720, shares rose from £120 to £1,020. The fluctuating market of the
Cacklogallinian 'Change, which responded to every rumor, follows
faithfully the actual situation in London in 1720; and the final crash
which shook Cacklogallinian foundations--subtly suggested by Brunt's
unwillingness to return and face the enraged multitude--is an echo of
the crash which shook England when the Bubble was pricked.

But its reflection of the economic background of the age is not the only
reason for the interest and importance of A Voyage to Cacklogallinia,
either in its generation or in our own. The little tale has its place in the
history of science, particularly in that movement of science which,
beginning with the "new astronomy" in the early seventeenth century,
was to produce one of the most important chapters in the history of
aviation.[5] So far as literature is concerned, A Voyage to
Cacklogallinia belongs to the literary genre of "voyages to the moon"
which from Lucian to H.G. Wells (even to modern "pulp magazines")
have enthralled human imagination. Yet while its fantasy looks back to
Lucian's Icaro-Menippus, who flew to the moon by using the wing of a
vulture and the wing of an eagle, its suggestion of the growing
scientific temper of modern times makes it much more than mere
fantasy. In the semilegendary history of Iran is to be found a tale, retold
by Firdausi in the Shaknameh, of Kavi Usan, who "essayed the sky To
outsoar angels" by fastening four eagles to his throne. The Iranian motif
was adopted in the romances of Alexander the Great and so passed into
European literature. The researches of Leonardo da Vinci upon the
muscles of birds and the principles of the flight of birds brought over to
the realm of science ideas long familiar in tale and legend. Francis
Bacon did not hesitate to suggest in his Natural History (Experiment
886) that there are possibilities of human flight by the use of birds and
"advises others to think further upon this experiment as giving some
light to the invention of the art of flying."
John Wilkins, one of the most influential early members of the Royal
Society, in his Mathematicall Magick,[6] in 1648, suggested "four
several ways whereby this flying in the air hath been or may be
attempted." He listed, as the second, "By the