The
example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation;
bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the
windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the
inflation he has contributed to produce.
Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its
sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the
exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind
of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure
gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation"
is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the
investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an
immediate fortune. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind
his ear, he is like La Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his
books of chivalry. His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or
changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after
pearls. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of
wealth that break upon his imagination.
When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of
fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers
busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of
scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy
than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges
the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure, of
distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging
gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming;
railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side;
when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game
of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he
beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up
by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and
vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears
the whole community joining in the theme of "unexampled prosperity.
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