An Essay on Projects | Page 9

weight, with which our fleets, standing two or three
miles off at sea, can imitate God Almighty Himself and rain fire and
brimstone out of heaven, as it were, upon towns built on the firm land;
witness also our new-invented child of hell, the machine which carries
thunder, lightning, and earthquakes in its bowels, and tears up the most
impregnable fortification.
But if I would search for a cause from whence it comes to pass that this
age swarms with such a multitude of projectors more than usual,
who--besides the innumerable conceptions, which die in the bringing
forth, and (like abortions of the brain) only come into the air and
dissolve--do really every day produce new contrivances, engines, and
projects to get money, never before thought of; if, I say, I would
examine whence this comes to pass, it must be thus:
The losses and depredations which this war brought with it at first were
exceeding many, suffered chiefly by the ill-conduct of merchants
themselves, who did not apprehend the danger to be really what it was:
for before our Admiralty could possibly settle convoys, cruisers, and
stations for men-of-war all over the world, the French covered the sea
with their privateers and took an incredible number of our ships. I have
heard the loss computed, by those who pretended they were able to
guess, at above fifteen millions of pounds sterling, in ships and goods,
in the first two or three years of the war--a sum which, if put into
French, would make such a rumbling sound of great numbers as would
fright a weak accountant out of his belief, being no less than one
hundred and ninety millions of livres. The weight of this loss fell

chiefly on the trading part of the nation, and, amongst them, on the
merchants; and amongst them, again, upon the most refined capacities,
as the insurers, &c. And an incredible number of the best merchants in
the kingdom sunk under the load, as may appear a little by a Bill which
once passed the House of Commons for the relief of merchant- insurers,
who had suffered by the war with France. If a great many fell, much
greater were the number of those who felt a sensible ebb of their
fortunes, and with difficulty bore up under the loss of great part of their
estates. These, prompted by necessity, rack their wits for new
contrivances, new inventions, new trades, stocks, projects, and
anything to retrieve the desperate credit of their fortunes. That this is
probable to be the cause will appear further thus. France (though I do
not believe all the great outcries we make of their misery and
distress--if one-half of which be true, they are certainly the best
subjects in the world) yet without question has felt its share of the
losses and damages of the war; but the poverty there falling chiefly on
the poorer sort of people, they have not been so fruitful in inventions
and practices of this nature, their genius being quite of another strain.
As for the gentry and more capable sort, the first thing a Frenchman
flies to in his distress is the army; and he seldom comes back from
thence to get an estate by painful industry, but either has his brains
knocked out or makes his fortune there.
If industry be in any business rewarded with success it is in the
merchandising part of the world, who indeed may more truly be said to
live by their wits than any people whatsoever. All foreign negotiation,
though to some it is a plain road by the help of custom, yet is in its
beginning all project, contrivance, and invention. Every new voyage
the merchant contrives is a project; and ships are sent from port to port,
as markets and merchandises differ, by the help of strange and
universal intelligence--wherein some are so exquisite, so swift, and so
exact, that a merchant sitting at home in his counting-house at once
converses with all parts of the known world. This and travel make a
true-bred merchant the most intelligent man in the world, and
consequently the most capable, when urged by necessity, to contrive
new ways to live. And from hence, I humbly conceive, may very
properly be derived the projects, so much the subject of the present
discourse. And to this sort of men it is easy to trace the original of

banks, stocks, stock-jobbing, assurances, friendly societies, lotteries,
and the like.
To this may be added the long annual inquiry in the House of
Commons for ways and means, which has been a particular movement
to set all the heads of the nation at work; and I appeal, with submission,
to the gentlemen of that honourable House, if the greatest part of all the
ways