From November 1719 to the following April, the price of Mississippi stock continued to rise until it reached 2050 per cent. On the 21st of the following month a royal &net appeared, which suddenly pro duced an entire revulsion in the public feeling. Under the pretence of a previous depreciation of the value of the coin, it was by this arrat declared necessary to reduce the nominal value of bank-notes to one half, and of the actions of the India or Missisdppi Company from 9000 to 5000 Lyres. It is not possible adequately to describe the calamitous effects produced throughout Franco by this step. The bank-notes, could no longer be circulated at more than one-tenth of their nominal value; and the parliament having represented the fatal consequences of the arrfit, another was issued, stating that "the king being informed that his reduction of bank-bills has had an effect quite contrary to his intention, and has produced a general confusion in commerce; and being desirous to favour the circulation of the said bank-bills for the conveniency of such as give or take them in payment, and having heard the report of the Sicur Law, he has ordsiued that bank-bills be current on the same footing as before the above arrilt, which be hereby revokes." The charm was however broken. This and ten other arrets which were issued in the course of a month from its date, could not restore the confidence of the public. Law found it prudent to retire from the management of the publio finances, and for his personal protection a guard was assigned to him. Many prudent persons applied themselves
earnestly to realise their property, and to send it for safety to other countries, which proceeding occasioned the issue of a royal ordonnance, in which such a course was forbidden upon pain of forfeiting double the value, while all investments in the stocks of foreign countries were prohibited on the like penalty. By these means the publio alarm was carried to its height. The bank-notes being generally refused in all transactions of business, an arret appeared forbidding any person to refuse them, under penalty of double their nominal value; and this occasioning a still greater run upon the bank, another arret was issued on the same day, ordering the bank "to suspend the payment of its notes till further orders." By these proceedings many thousands of families, once wealthy, were suddenly reduced to indigence • and Law, who was the original con coctor, and had been the chief instrument In carrying out these financial delusions, was obliged to quit France with an iuoonsiderable fortune, the wreck of what he !night at one time have realised : ho resided for seine time in different places in Germany, and settled at length at Venice, whore he died in 1729.
In 'A Discourse upon Money and Trade,' which he wrote and published in Scotland, Law has left a record of the flattering but visionary views which led him to hie financial schemes.