: A Voyage to Cacklogallinia With a Description of the Religion Policy Customs and Manners of That Country by Brunt Samuel Nicolson Marjorie Hope Author Of Introduction Etc - Travelers Fiction; Voyages Imaginary Early works to 1800; Swift Jonathan 1667-1745.

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Transcriber's note: The 18th-century text showed direct quotation in a number of ways, including italics and continuous quotation marks. In this e-text, longer italicized passages are shown as block quotes without quotation marks, while passages with marginal quotes are shown as block quotes with quotation marks.

A list of corrections to the text can be found at the end of the file.

A VOYAGE TO CACKLOGALLINIA

With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of that Country

CAPTAIN SAMUEL BRUNT

Reproduced from the Original Edition, 1727, with an Introduction by

MARJORIE NICOLSON

INTRODUCTION

Fortunately the authorship of the work is of little importance. It lives, not because of anything remarkable in the style or anything original in its author's point of view, but because of its satiric reflection of the background of its age. It is republished both because of its historical value and because of its peculiarly contemporary appeal today. Its satire needs no learned paraphernalia of footnotes; it can be readily understood and appreciated by readers in an age dominated on the one hand by economics and on the other, by science. Its satire-- not too subtle--is as pertinent in our own period as it was two hundred years ago. Its irony is concerned with stock exchanges and feverish speculation. It is a tale of incredible inflation and abrupt and devastating depression. Its "voyage to the moon" has not lost its appeal to men and women who can still remember a period when human flights seemed incredible and who have lived to see "flying chariots" spanning oceans and continents and ascending into the stratosphere.

Of the many speculative schemes of the early eighteenth century, none is better known than the "South Sea Bubble." After a long period during which English trade with the Spanish West Indies was carried on by subterfuge, an Act of Parliament in 1710 incorporated into a joint-stock company the state creditors, upon the basis of their loan of ten million pounds to the Government and conferred upon them the monopoly of the English trade with the Indies. In spite of these advantages, however, the South Sea Company found itself so hampered and limited in credit that it offered to convert the national debt into a "single redeemable obligation" to the company in return for a monopoly of British foreign trade outside England. The immediate and spectacular effect of that offer is reflected in the many descriptions, both serious and satiric, of an era of speculation which to many generations might seem incredible--though not to this generation which has itself lived through an orgy of speculation.

Our greatest ladies hither come, And ply in chariots daily; Oft pawn their jewels for a sum To venture in the Alley.

The meteoric rise in the price of shares in the moon-mountain project of the Cacklogallinians is no greater than the actual rise in prices of shares during the South Sea Bubble, when, between April and July, 1720, shares rose from ?120 to ?1,020. The fluctuating market of the Cacklogallinian 'Change, which responded to every rumor, follows faithfully the actual situation in London in 1720; and the final crash which shook Cacklogallinian foundations--subtly suggested by Brunt's unwillingness to return and face the enraged multitude--is an echo of the crash which shook England when the Bubble was pricked.

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