The Bubble Act

A Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith.  Page 49.

Nor was the South Sea Company the only opportunity. Its success spawned at least a hundred imitators and hitchhikers, all hoping to take part in the boom. These included companies to develop perpetual motion (also ahead of its time), to insure horses, to improve the art of making soap, to trade in hair, to repair and rebuild parsonage and vicarage houses, to transmute quicksilver into malleable fine metal, and to erect houses or hospitals for taking in and maintaining illegitimate children, as well as the immortal enterprise "for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." In July of 1720, the government finally called a halt; legislation - the Bubble Act - was passed prohibiting these other promotions, less, it has always been thought, to protect the foolish and the innocent than to secure the speculative monopoly of the South Sea Company itself.