ABSTRACT
T HE last chapter described how the South Sea Company's scheme originated, and was accepted by the government and Parliament, and some of the personal factors influencing these events. The present chapter is concerned in the first place with the exchanges of government debts for new South Sea stock in I 720 and the company's issue for sale of part of the new stock rernaining after these exchanges; and then with the frantic rise in the market price of all securities which formed a background to them. lt concludes with the shattering of the market in the late summer of I 720, which made drastic measures of financial relief and reconstruction inevitable. These measures in turn, and the slow climb back to financial and social stability, are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8.
