The gallop of a horse's feet aroused them, they rushed to the window, the horse stopped before the door, and in another moment Hans, the lieutenant, with the King's sash and the order of merit, stood before them. Almost overwhelmed by their kisses he found at last time to say, "Marie, my sister, the King himself tied his own sash round my waist; that we will hang as a laurel wreath round Father's picture. But yours I will wear as long as I live, and Father will never more have to ask in his dreams: "Does Hans not yet follow me ?" " From Blackwood's Magazine. JOHN LAW AND HIS SPECULATIONS. sition of John Law was not fixed on a sufficiently lofty pedestal to stand the fastidious criticism of a people who were the most aristocratic in Europe, down to the period of reaction, when it became a sin against democracy to speak of a Regent and Comptroller-general. M. Cochut says: "Etait-il on non gentilhomme ?" a question which, he says, caused much serious and determined debate at one time, and is not without its interest now. The fact is, that he was in the position which we so well understand in this country, but which foreigners can not comprehendwhere a person is a gentleman or not, just as he possesses, or is deficient in, certain qualities of the head and heart, promoted by certain petty indefinable social advan THE French, who are said to forget their | great men after a generation has passed over their tombs, still take a lively interest in the history of John Law. Probably there is something peculiarly adapted to their ardent taste in its meteoric character. Every historian who tells them the history of the regency, from Voltaire to Sismondi, braces himself up to the full tension of his powers of description and excitation as he approaches the great Mississippi scheme. But it is perhaps the most remarkable testimony to the popularity of the subject that we should be able to pick up for a couple of francs, in the French Railway Library, (the Bibliothèque des Chemins-defer,) an amusing volume, called Law-son Système et son Epoque, par P. A. Cochut. It must be admitted that the French his-tages. To those who choose to believe torians are not always complimentary to the pilot of that storm. They had many provocations to attack him, and he offered in the conditions by which he was surrounded, many avenues of attack. If a nation will submit to feel grateful for the services of a foreigner-a rare occurrence -it will never patiently endure injuries or calamities at his hands. The social po in him as a gentleman, he was Law de Lauriston, with a significant patronymic title, while his enemies could say, that any man rich enough to buy an estate in Britain could call his land and himself by what name he pleased; or even, like that ingenious historian who called himself Monteith de Salmonet, in honor of his father's trade as a fisherman, create a ter ritorial title out of nothing. He was an Edinburgh silversmith, which sounded ill abroad, but had little significancy here. As in some other trades, it did not tell whether its owner was a mere retailer, or a merchant who dealt in large affairs, and was more likely than a provincial squire to be a gentleman. He might be a mere vendor of tooth-picks and pencil-cases; but on the other hand, he might be a large dealer in bullion and money, whose transactions affected the monetary system in his country. George Heriot, his predecessor in his profession, married into the titled family of Rosebery; and Law married, without apparently any consciousness of inequality, the Lady Catherine, daughter of the Earl of Banbury; while, in the days of his pride and power, the house of Argyll was glad to claim kindred with him, through his mother, who was a Campbell. After his fall, it, was, however, ominously remarked against him that, even during the height of that pride and power, one fellow-countrymen kept at haughty distance from him. This was Lord Stair, the British ambassador; the man who by his firmness, courage, and sagacity, was the first to restore the influence of England on the Continent, where it had greatly decayed since the time when his countryman Lockhart represented the Commonwealth. We might have here, were there not richer materials at hand, no mean spe- | cimen of the eminent Scot abroad, but we only notice Lord Stair, parenthetically, to say that his enmity to Law was on public grounds, not on private or social. He thought at one time that the schemer was likely to make France too powerful a rival in trade and colonization to England. He thought subsequently that the system was to ruin a country which he wished to see kept under the level of Britain, but not utterly destroyed. He adhered to his opposition with honorable firmness, alike disdaining the allurements of advantageous allocations which had brought over the greatest men in France, and coolly defying the threats of his own court, which, protesting that it could not afford to be offensive to so great a man as the Comptroller-general, threatened to recall him. On the whole, it was a sight flattering to the pride of Scotland, to see in this conspicuous arena two of her sons rising so high above the level of all around them, and bidding each other stern defiance, each from the standard of his own fixed principles. But leaving the question of Law's family and social position where we found it, let us cast a glance on a few of those incidental characteristics of the greatness of his talents, the boldness of his policy, and the vastness of his influence, which are shown to us by the results of late inquiries. It is a historical vulgarism to speak of this man as a gambling adventurer, capable only of imposing on a confiding public with a glittering and hollow plan for making money. An adventurer perhaps he must be admitted to have been, but in the sense in which Cæsar, Arteveld, Wolsey, and Napoleon were adventurers. He was a statesman who looked far into the distant future for the results of all his acts-an erring statesman if you will, but still a great one. He firmly believed that he would raise up in France a power that would struggle with and put down the waxing commercial greatness of England. Nor can we well charge the project as criminally unpatriotic. Scotland and England had not been so long in union as to feel themselves one people; and when Law threw his interests into another nation, the old ally of Scotland, he did what in his father's day would have been deemed an act of patriotism. In the course of a series of letters to the English court, full of alarming prognostications, we find the British ambassador saying: "You must henceforth look upon Law as the first minister, whose daily discourse is that he will raise France to a greater height than ever she was, on the ruins of England and Holland." And again: "He in all his discourse pretends he will set France much higher than ever she was before, and put her in a condition to give the law to all Europe; that he can ruin the trade of England and Holland whenever he pleases; that he can break our bank whenever he has a mind, and our East-India Company. He said publicly the other day at his own table when Lord Londonderry was present, that there was but one great kingdom in Europe, and one great town-and that was France and Paris. He told Pitt that he would bring down our East-India stock; and entered into articles with him to sell him, at twelve months hence, £100,000 of stock at 11 per cent under the current price. You may imagine what we have to apprehend from a man of this temper, who makes no scruple to declare such views, and who will have all the power and all the influence at this court."* Such passages have not inaptly been compared with the boastings of Napoleon when he issued the Berlin and Milan decrees. endured, the country was the better for the Mississippi scheme, deriving from it an elasticity of movement which led her on to subsequent prosperity. Many people will doubt this view; but it is rather remarkable that Law's scheme was considered by the French themselves so fundamentally sound that they virtually repeated it in the celebrated issue of assignats during the Revolution. We are not going to undertake the Quixotic task of vindicating the Mississippi scheme when we say, that there was more soundness in Law's proposals than the world has been disposed to concede to one who was unfortunate, and that many The utter prostration of the patient's of the calamitous results were caused by condition when the new physician took their not obtaining fair play. They were her in hand, is not to be conceived. Louis subjected to that" ergoism," as it is aptly XIV. with his costly triumphs, and the dire termed, of the French, which makes them vengeance taken for them, had left the drive every opinion ruthlessly to its ut- country destitute of ships, of commerce, most logical conclusion-that spirit so well of agriculture, of money, of hope itself. exemplified in Robespierre, when it was There had just been a savage hunting-down said that he would slay one half of man- of farmers-general, monopolists, and other kind to get the other half to follow his persons who were supposed to have enprinciples of rigid virtue. Hence what-riched themselves at the public expense. ever Law commenced was carried out to its utmost extreme; and when there arose the faintest reäctive misgiving, the foundations of his complicated structure were at once kicked away, and the whole toppled down in ruin. In Law's politico-economical works there are many views of undisputed soundness. His ideas of the nature of metallic money correspond with the prevalent political economy of the present day. He seems, indeed, to have been the first to disperse the theory, entertained by Locke and many others, that the precious metals are endowed, by the general consent of mankind, with an imaginary value; and he shows that their universal employment as a circulating medium depends on their real value, arising from their ornamental and portable character, their indestructibility, and, above all, the nearly uniform amount of labor that it ever costs to bring them into the market. His notion of the real value of the precious metals was the antinome, as it were, of his view that their cost prevented the supply of money in sufficient abundance; that they were too dear, in short, and ought to be discarded for a cheaper and more prolific medium. The main tenor of his theory was, that when a country is exhausted it can only be resuscitated by an infusion of fresh financial blood in the shape of easy issues of money. Voltaire, in his Age of Louis XV., testifies that, in the end, it was successful, and that, through all the misery and ruin she * Hardwick's State Papers, ii., 593., But the slaughter and pillage of a few millionaires would not make up for the prostration of enterprise and industry. The foreigner who offered to cure these constitutional disorders was no nameless and needy wanderer. He was a favorite among the European courts, where he had daz zled the eyes of the smaller monarchs with visions which they sighed to reflect that they had not ready capital sufficient to realize. He is described as very handsome, very accomplished, and of marvellously fascinating address. More than all, he did not come empty-handed. He was in possession of a sum said to be a hundred thousand pounds in English money, which, with his usual sanguine impetuosity, he threw into his own scheme, and there lost. He was accused of having realized this money at the gaming-table. No doubt Law gamed; it was a prevalent vice of the day, only too congenial to a temperament so vivacious and susceptible. But he does not appear to have ever condescended to petty dissipated gambling, his practices had more of the character of stock-jobbing. He played with princes and ministers, that he might strengthen his hand to hold a political part in European history; and he was rather too successful in accomplishing his object. Our readers are not to expect from us a history of "the System," and we shall here notice only those incidents of violent oscillation, which show how remorselessly the complex plans of the ingenious speculator were dashed backwards or forwards, according to the prevalent humor or panic of the moment. When he had | Accordingly, that celebrated edict was issued, that no person or corporation could legally possess more than 500 livres in specie, whether it were in coined money or in the shape of plate or ornaments. A sort of insane aversion to the precious metals-a simple desire to put them out of existence is the best account that history gives of this affair. But we can suppose that the design of Law himself was to bring the bullion into his bank, and make a metallic basis, somewhat on Sir Robert Peel's system, for his paper currency. Bullion did, in fact, flow into the bank, to the extent, in three week, of 44 millions of livres-about 5 millions sterling; but it passed through as from a sieve, not apparently in the slightest degree to the regret of the Regent and his courtiers. The dilapidation which the law of confiscation created among the family plate in the great houses may easily be imagined; but such a trifling inconvenience was not to be permitted to impede the onward progress of the system. The law was carried out with rigor and cruelty. The police were directed to make domiciliary visits, and the informer received one half of the forfeited treasure. It would appear, from an anecdote, that whoever had served the public by denouncing a bullion-keeper, might retain what he had so worthily acquired. One day the President Lambert de Varmon appeared before the chief of police, and stated that he was prepared to denounce a criminal possessed of 5000 livres in gold. The chief was shocked somewhat; he thought the rage for denunciation was spreading far indeed, when so amiable and excellent a man was infected by it. "Whom was he to de way of saving a moiety of his fortune. There has been wild enough work of this sort in our own country; but the peculiarity of the great French system was, that whenever the popular mania took a particular direction, the government beckoned it, urged it-nay, coerced iton to the utmost extreme. The public mind was so well saturated with Law's aversion to the precious metals and preference for paper money, that for once gold became a drug in the market. People who chose might hoard it, but none, save a few eccentric exceptions to the prevail-nounce ?"-himself. He knew no other ing opinions, then wished to hoard. All were under a sort of trading fever; they As part of his grand project for resusmust be speculating and increasing their citating France, and lifting her to a height wealth; and with so worthless a thing as of greatness far above that achieved by gold there was no use of trading, for no the great monarch who had just passed one would take it. Thus, to the eminent to his account, Law proposed to carry out satisfaction of the leaders of opinion, the the greater portion of those internal reprecious metals were rapidly streaming forms which France has subsequently out of the kingdom into countries still so adopted; having effected some of them by benighted as to deem them worthy of peaceful degrees, and others by sudden possession. Still there were a few-a very violence. But the relentless vehemence few people of sceptical and saturnine with which the government proposed imtemperament, who, distrusting the "Sys-mediately to enforce all these radical tem," were suspected of having secret changes, effectually defeated them. hoards of the precious metal in their pos- was part of his plan to abolish the infamous session. This was a sort of treason against corvée, with all the multitudinous feudal the system, and must not be permitted. | taxes, and to establish a capitation and property tax. Doubtless the exemptions | their keepers and tore them. The guard enjoyed by the nobility would have been fired on the Amazons, killing six and swept away before the paper hurricane as wounding many others. At the same they fell in the great day of sacrifices at time the wildest exaggerations were pubthe commencement of the Revolution, and lished, to encourage voluntary emigration. the government again was not to impede Some deep politicians thought it would the system on so trifling a consideration; assist the progress of French aggrandisebut the reaction postponed the sacrifice ment in the West, and make the Parisian for half a century. Farther, Law anti- Empire that was to cover the New Hemicipated the beneficent policy of Turgot, sphere arise more rapidly, were some in a proposal to abolish the provincial French blood infused into the native royal restrictions and monopolies which inter- races of North-America. Accordingly rupted the trade of the country, and made the Queen of Missouri was induced to Frenchmen strangers to each other. He come to Paris to select a husband. The had a vast colonization scheme, which was fortunate object of her choice was a stalto serve two objects. It was to raise up wart sergeant in the Guards, named Dubois. a French empire in America, which, be- A disagreeable condition said to be attached ginning in the valley of the Mississippi, to the new dignity probably impeded should radiate thence and pervade the more distinguished candidates. The whole of the western hemisphere. It was Queen of Missouri, being a Daughter of to be at the same time a means of remov- the Sun, was entitled to cut off her husing the damaged and surplus population band's head if he displeased her; and of France, and sweetening the blood of rumor went that Dubois the First actuthe country. ally suffered the penalty of this rigid discipline. But all distinct record of his fate was lost in the tangled mixture of wild adventures encountered by the thousands who were unshipped on the desert shore No sooner was the scheme proposed than the government plunged into it with its wonted impetuosity. On the morning of the 19th September, 1719, the bells of St. Martin gave forth a wedding-peal; it was no mere private joy-peal, but something that might announce a royal wedding or some other important ceremony. All the people are on the alert; and behold there wind through the street one hundred and eighty damsels, dressed in white, with garlands of flowers, each attended by a bridegroom suitably apparelled. They move onwards with signal regularity and precision; and no wonder they are chained together with iron fetters, and on each side of them marches a file of musqueteers. These are the female convicts of the prison of St. Martin des Champs, each mated with a suitable husband from one of the other prisons, and the whole are to be shipped off to form an earthly paradise in the West. It had been well had matters stopped with the prisons; but a kind of emigration rapacity seized upon the government. They looked around with greedy eyes, finding this or that damaged part of the population, and immediately amputating it for removal. It was as if a universal press-gang were abroad. People hid themselves, and were dragged forth from their hiding-places, lodged in some prison, and marched down in chains to a vessel. At Rochelle a gang of one hundred and fifty women fell on shovelled, as it were, into a strange land swarming with savages, and left there to struggle for life and food. The government was ready to do any thing-to banish the Parliament from Paris-to hang a member of one of the first families in Europe-to confiscate for tunes and abolish powers and privilegesif it appeared that the act was likely to have the faintest efficiency in establishing the universal dominion of "the System." In the same manner, when the first breath was blown on it, instead of leaving it to struggle on or die naturally, they turned on it and rent it. The first symptom of alarm was the high price of commodities. They mounted, though not by such extravagant leaps, as rapidly as the value of the Actions, doubling, trebling, and quadrupling. This was just the natural effect of an excessive and valueless currency. If the government could have reduced that currency by buying it in, they might have made it rather more appropriate to its object. But short, violent remedies were the rule under the Regent's government, and a decree was issued reducing the nominal value of notes to one half. It reduced their actual value to nothing. They were something to be got rid of on any terms. Had the French Revolution taken place |