INTRODUCTION. vii 



have made even the most reckless pause and consider 

 before he threw his money away, were it not that in 

 the present day schemes yet wilder and less plausible 

 seem to find supporters. The schemes for extracting 

 gold and silver from lead, for the new water engine, for 

 Sir Richard Steele's 'new invented vessell for bringing 

 fish alive and in health from any distant place/ and the 

 making of felt hats and pantiles, suggest the fraudulent 

 promoter to modern eyes and ears. Simplicity abounds 

 in all ages, but even the most charitable view of the 

 affair will not acquit the adventurer from the charge 

 of gambling. The method of forming joint-stock com- 

 panies in the beginning of the eighteenth century was 

 peculiar, but some of these documents are not even 

 the shares of a company actually in existence. They 

 are only the permits authorizing the holder to sub- 

 scribe for a company that is to be formed. If the 

 subscription goes forward he has to pay a consider- 

 able additional sum ; if not, he has nothing but the 

 scrap of paper to show for his money. There is one 

 further point of interest. I have seen it suggested that 

 the ' new invented water engine ' was a precursor of 

 the steam engine, but the picture printed on the 

 certificate shows that it cannot have been anything of 

 the sort. 



The next series of tables, seven to eleven, is intended 

 to assist the student of prices of labour in the eighteenth 

 century. The first is an assessment of wages by the 

 Justices of the Peace for the West Riding, which I was 

 allowed to copy from the original by the kindness of 

 the Clerk to the Justices. It was repeated several 

 times, generally without alteration. Such assessments of 

 wages are perhaps not quite so uncommon as they were 



