170 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



all the transactions and of the profits made, which seemed in 

 some cases very large. 



Many men, unused to the possession of so much money, 

 became so very extravagant that they spent more than their 

 income, and began to live at such a high rate of expenditure, 

 buying carriages and horses, and living in such a fashion 

 that only men who possessed untold wealth and capital 

 could afford to do it. 



What was foreseen by more wise and more thoughtful 

 people came to pass. Everyone having now become bulb- 

 grower, there came to be so many tulips in the market that 

 prices suddenly dropped, and many buyers refused to take 

 the bulbs at the price agreed upon, and many quarrels and 

 disputes arose over the matter. Finally, the States-General 

 of Holland appointed by decree that, from the 27th of April 

 1636, tulip-sellers had the right to force buyers to buy at 

 a price agreed upon (a standard price ?). So this decree 

 stopped very high speculations, and a Semper Augustus, for 

 example, for which previously several thousand florins had 

 been paid, now fetched only 50 florins. There came a re- 

 action, and a great number of people were ruined. 



In this way, says De Koning, began and ended a trade or 

 commerce in bulbs, which in nearly all the towns in Holland, 

 but especially in Haarlem, Leyden, Amsterdam, Alknaar, 

 Hoorn, and Enkhuizen, was kept up with- such energy that, 

 alone in Haarlem, 10,000,000 florins for tulip bulbs was paid 

 and received, and the States-General of Holland were even 

 weighing the advisability of taxing the industry which 

 brought so much luxury. The little gardens near and in 

 and about Haarlem had both wide and narrow " moneyless 

 paths," all of which date from the time of the tulip mania in 

 the seventeenth century, and remain as witnesses of the folly 

 of our forefathers. 



