BUBBLE, in commerce, a cant term given to a kind of project for raising of money on imaginary grounds, much practised in France and England in the years 1719, 1720, and 1721.
The pretence of those schemes was the raising a capital for retrieving, setting on foot, or carrying on some promising and useful branch of trade, manufacture, machinery, or the like: To this end proposals were made out, shewing the advantages to be derived from the undertaking, and inviting persons to be engaged in it. The sum necessary to manage the affair, together with the profits expected from it, were divided into shares or subscriptions, to be purchased by any disposed to adventure therein.
Bubbles, by which the public have been tricked,
are of two kinds, viz. 1. Those which we may properly enough term trading-bubbles; and, 2. Stock or fund-bubbles. The former have been of various kinds; and the latter at different times, as in 1719 and 1720.