aw conceived the idea of substituting the company for the government,
and converting the whole national debt into shares in the Indian
Company. To accomplish this he wished the company to lend the treasury
the fifteen to sixteen hundred millions which would redeem the debt; and
that, to obtain this enormous sum, it should issue shares to that
amount. In this manner the fifteen or sixteen hundred millions furnished
to the government by the company, and paid out by the government to its
creditors, must return to the company by the sale of its shares. Let us
see the means which Law had devised to insure the success of his scheme.
The government would pay 3 per cent. interest for the sum loaned to it,
which would make forty-five or forty-eight millions a year. The treasury
would thus effect an annual saving of thirty-two or thirty-five millions
in the interest on the debt. In return, the collection of the revenue
must be transferred to the company, notwithstanding that it had been
actually granted to the brothers Paris. The collection would pay the
collectors a net profit of fifteen or sixteen millions. The company,
receiving 3 per cent. interest on the capital invested, and reaping from
another source a profit of fifteen or sixteen millions, would be in a
position to pay 4 per cent. on the sixteen hundred millions of the debt
converted into shares.

The profits from commerce and its future success might soon enable it to
increase this dividend. According to the prevailing rates of interest,
which had fallen to 3 per cent. since the establishment of the bank,
this was a sufficient remuneration on the shares. They had, besides, the
hope of increasing their capital. The shares having, in fact, doubled in
value during the opposition of the "Antisystem," they ought to increase
still more rapidly since they were relieved from this opposition. The
expectation that the fifteen or sixteen hundred millions of the debt
would be invested in the shares was well founded. There was even a
certainty of it; for this immense capital, forcibly expelled from its
investment in state securities, could find no other place for investment
than in the company.

This plan of Law's was vast and bold. Its success would liquidate the
state debt and diminish the annual charges on the treasury, reducing the
interest from eighty millions to forty-five or forty-eight millions. The
annual charges from which the treasury was to be relieved were to be
paid f