Memoirs of Popular Delusions Vol 1 | Page 3

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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 amusing. A more ludicrous and
yet painful spectacle, than that which Holland presented in the years
1635 and