CHAPTER VIII. EARLY PART OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

villany, were discovered to have been secretly concocted and carried out by the directors; and it was proved that the Earl of Sunderland, the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess Platen and her two nieces, Mr Craggs, M.P., the Company’s secretary, Mr Charles Stanhope, a secretary of the Treasury, and the Sword Blade Company, had been bribed to promote the Company’s bill in Parliament by a present of £170,000 of South Sea stock. The total amount of fictitious stock created for this and similar purposes was £1,260,000, nearly one-half of which had been disposed of. Equally flagrant iniquity in the allocation of shares was discovered, in which, among others, Mr Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was implicated. Of these offenders, Mr Stanhope and the Earl of Sunderland were acquitted through the unworthy partiality of the Parliament; but Mr Aislabie, and the other directors who were members of the House of Commons, were expelled; most of the directors were discovered, and all of them suffered confiscation of their possessions. The chairman was allowed to retain only £5000 out of £183,000, and others in proportion to their share in the fraudulent transactions of the Company. At the end of 1720, it