dventurer and a gambler who yet became
celebrated as a financier and commercial promoter. After killing an
antagonist in a duel in London, he escaped the gallows by fleeing to
the Continent, where he followed gaming and at the same time devised
financial schemes which he proposed to various governments for their
adoption. His favorite notion was that large issues of paper money
could be safely circulated with small security.

Law offered to relieve Orleans from his financial troubles, and the
Regent listened with favor to his proposals. In 1716 Law, with
others, organized what he called the General Bank. It was ably
managed, became popular, and by means of it Law successfully carried
out his paper-currency ideas. His notes were held at a premium over
those of the government, whose confidence was therefore won. Two
years later Law's institution was adopted by the state and became
the Royal Bank of France. The further undertakings of this
extraordinary "new light of finance," the blowing and bursting of
the great "bubble," are recorded by Thiers, the French statesman and
historian, himself eminent as his country's chief financier during
her wonderful recovery after the Franco-German War.

Law was always scheming to concentrate into one establishment his bank,
the administration of the public revenues, and the commercial
monopolies. He resolved, in order to attain this end, to organize,
separately, a commercial company, to which he would add, one after
another, different privileges in proportion to its success, and which
he would then incorporate with the General Bank. Constructing thus
separately each of the pieces of his vast machine, he proposed
ultimately to unite them and form the grand whole, the object of his
dreams and his ardent ambition.

An immense territory, discovered by a Frenchman, in the New World,
presented itself for the speculations of Law. The Chevalier de la Salle,
the famous traveller of the time, having penetrated into America by
Upper Canada, descended the river Illinois, arrived suddenly at a great
river half a league wide, and, abandoning himself to the current, was
borne into the Gulf of Mexico. This river was the Mississippi. The
Chevalier de la Salle took possession of the country he had passed
through for the King of France, and gave it the beautiful name of
Louisiana.

There was much said of the magnificence and fer