modities rose without any injury to the people. The ell of cloth which had sold for fifteen livres, now sold for fifty; and the pound of coffee rose from fifty sols to eighteen livres. Wages rose correspondingly. In the course of three months, the silversmiths of Paris had received orders for, and manufactured above £7,000,000 sterling worth of plate-about $35,000,000. Paris was crowded with foreign visitors who had come to speculate in the stocks. No fewer than 305,000 strangers are said to have been living in Paris in November, 1719, and many of these were obliged to live in granaries and lofts, there not being sufficient house accommodation for them all. The promenaders in the streets were clothed in velvet and gold; and the winter of 1719-20 was more brilliant than the finest summer ever seen before.

Law was now the idol of the country, and the enthusiasm in his favour was greatly increased by his making a public profession of the Roman Catholic religion, in December, 1719. The only obstacle to his admission to political dignity being thus removed, he was declared comptroller-general of the finances, in January, 1720, a situation equivalent to that of primeminister of France. Literary and other honours were showered upon him; venal poets and parasites complimented him as the saviour of France; he had realized an enormous fortune and had purchased fifteen or sixteen large estates, together with houses and mansions, amounting to the value of 7,000,000 livres; yet his generosity was equal to his wealth. On the occasion of professing himself a Catholic he gave 500,000 livres to assist in completing the church at St. Roch; he distributed another sum of 500,000 among the English who were impoverished in following the fortunes of the exiled house of Stuart, and his private liberalities were constant and munificent. His native city, Edinburgh, transmitted him its freedom in a gold box, proud of having given him birth; English and Scottish noblemen boasted of being acquainted with Mr. Law, although his return to England would have been attended with danger, in consequence of an appeal being still pending, against a pardon which had been granted to him in 1695, after he had been found guilty of murder in killing one Wilson in a duel, and sentenced to death. He had escaped from prison to the continent, and notwithstanding the rewards offered for his apprehension in the "London Gazette," he had hitherto remained undisturbed on the continent, and had risen to his present extraordinary elevation. The fugitive from England, the speculator and gambler of Holland, Belgium, Italy, and France, had become the greatest man of the age, and the future sovereign (George II., then Prince of Wales) to whom he might be indebted for his life, which had been forfeited, was a dabbler in his famous Mississippi stock.

The bubble however was already full blown. The credit of the Bank

and of the India Company was at its height in the months of November and December, 1719, and January, 1720, when shares in the company were selling at 10,000 livres each. Such was the abundance of money in the Bank that it offered to lend sums of any amount, on proper security, at an interest of only two per cent. Now, however, a drain of specie from the Bank began to be discernible. Numbers of persons possessed of stock in the company, either foreseeing disaster or haunted with a vague suspicion that so prosperous a state of things could not last long, began to sell out, and convert their shares into gold and silver and other precious commodities, which they either hoarded up or sent secretly out of the country. The Prince de Conti, offended at being refused a quantity of fresh shares, for which he petitioned, sent to the Bank to demand specie for so enormous a mass of notes, that three wagons were required to carry the money from the bank to his house. Vernesobre de Laurieu, a Prussian, whom Mr. Law had appointed a cashier in the bank, remitted nearly 40,000,000 livres to foreign countries, and then disappeared. Various stock-jobbers remitted hundreds of thousands of louis-d'ors to England. These examples were imitated by others, for nothing is more contagious than fear; and in a short time 500,000,000 livres in specie were sent out of France.

To put a stop to this run upon the Bank, which, from the immense quantity of notes in circulation, would be ruinous, a series of edicts were issued by the regent in February and March, 1720. By these edicts, payments in specie were restricted to small sums, (not exceeding 100 livres in gold, and 10 livres in silver,) while at the same time efforts were made to secure a preference for paper over specie, by declaring the value of the former to be invariable, while that of the latter fluctuated. People were prohibited from converting their wealth into gold and silver plate without a royal license, the demand for plate having been one of the principal means of withdrawing the precious metals from circulation. The exertions thus made were for some time effectual; and numbers seeing notes passing current at 5 or 10 per cent. above specie, hastened to convert all the specie in their possession into paper. There is, however, in the minds of men at such a time, a natural preference for the metals over paper; and accordingly it was found that many were busy in secret hoarding up gold and silver, and cautiously disposing of their paper in anticipation of the coming crash. Fresh edicts of a more stringent and arbitrary character were issued; one, forbidding the use of specie altogether in payment, another forbidding any person to have in his possession more than 500 livres of coin, under the penalty of having the sum confiscated and the payment of a fine in addition.

In an instant, so suddenly in fact, that it is impossible to trace the

steps of the process, the nation, which had been glorying in its good fortune, was struck with dismay and despair. The use of specie had been prohibited, but this could not restore confidence in Law's paper, and nobody would accept it willingly. It was felt universally that Law's scheme had been a bubble, and that it had now burst. Complaints and execrations arose everywhere against Law, the Regent, and all who had been concerned in originating the project. Law was attacked by all who had envied his prosperity, and who had only been restrained from showing their ill will, by his success, and he was accused of plotting the ruin of France; even the Regent, who had hitherto been his intimate friend, and at whose solicitations Law had adopted some of his most questionable measures, turned against him.

All efforts to arrest the progress of the panic were in vain. Fresh issues of notes had taken place in consequence of the decree ordering all payments to be made in paper, and in May, 1720, the notes issued amounted to 2,600,000,000 livres, while the quantity of specie in the kingdom was estimated at 1,300,000,000, or only half as much. To equalize the paper with the specie, there were two plans: either to double the value of the specie, or halve the value of the paper. Law advised the former, as being a thing to which the people were quite accustomed; but his advice was overruled; and on the 21st of May, an edict was published reducing the value of the paper by a gradual process till it should be exactly half its present value-a note for 10,000 livres passing current for only 5000, and so on. This reduction was a violation of the original constitution of Law's Bank; and if paper had been disliked before, the promulgation of this edict made matters a thousand times worse; bank notes were regarded as waste paper, and a person might have starved with 100,000 livres of paper money in his pocket.

On the 27th of May the Bank stopped payment in specie, and on the same day Law was dismissed from his office as minister of finance. Riots and mobbings took place; troops occupied Paris to prevent insurrections from breaking out; Law's life was in danger, and the Regent gave him a guard as he drove through the street; but at length, not being safe in his own house, he took refuge in the Palais Royal.

Various ineffectual expedients were adopted to sustain some certain value for the notes; the funding of them in annuities, and their redemption by other issues of a distinct character were proposed, but still the holders of them hesitated to accept the propositions offered by the government; decrees passed declaring that the notes would be good for no purpose whatever after the first of November, 1721. Numbers however kept their notes until after the specified time, in the vain hope of better terms, and the consequence was that large quantities of Law's notes reVOL. I.-22

mained in houses as family lumber, down even to the date of the French revolution, when they were produced as curiosities, to be compared with the assignats.

With the Bank, fell the India Company; no efforts could keep its credit alive; the management of the Mint and the administration of the revenues of government were taken out of its hands; and it was degraded to a mere trading body. Such was the end of the famous Mississippi bubble.

Law obtained leave to quit France-his life was not safe in it. His enormous fortune he had invested in French lands and securities, which were confiscated the moment he left the country. The sole property he carried with him was a diamond worth about £5000 sterling. After travelling through various parts of the continent, he returned to England, where he resided four years, supporting himself by his talents for gambling. He died at Venice, in 1729, in very embarrassed circumstances. (See Chambers's Miscel. Wood's Life of Law of Lauriston. Mackay's Popular Delusions.)

NOTE F. Page 88.

For the gratification of the curious we give a more particular account of this principal French fortress on the Mississippi. It was begun in 1720, and completed eighteen months afterward. It was erected in the vicinity of Prairie du Rocher, and was originally one mile and a half from the river bank. Its form was quadrilateral, with four bastions, built of stone, and well cemented with lime. Each side was three hundred and forty feet in length; the walls were three feet thick and fifteen feet high. Within the walls were spacious stone barracks, a spacious magazine, two deep wells, and such buildings as are common at such posts. The port-holes or loups were formed by four solid blocks of freestone properly shaped. The cornices, and casements about the gates, were of the same material. It was greatly repaired and enlarged in 1750.

In 1770 the river broke through its banks, and formed a channel near one of the bastions, and in two years afterward, two bastions being undermined, the English abandoned it in 1772. It was then suffered to fall to decay, and in 1809 it was a splendid ruin, grown over in its area with forest trees, vines, and weeds. Some of the trees then were from seven to twelve inches in diameter. (Stoddart's Sketches, p. 234.)

A good description of this fort, as it appeared in 1765 and 1829, may be seen in Hall's Sketches of the West, vol. i. 154–157.

NOTE G. Page 96.

Extract from the Voyages of the Rev. Father Emanuel Crespel, in Canada, and his shipwreck in returning to France, in the years from 1723 to 1742.

LETTER FIRST.

On the seventeenth day of March, in the year of my departure from: Quebec, (1726,) M. de la Croix de St. Valier, bishop of that city, conferred upon me the degree of priest, and gave me shortly afterward a mission, or curacy, called Forel, situated south of the river St. Lawrence, between the City of the Three Rivers, and Montreal.

I was withdrawn from my curacy, where I had already remained two years, and appointed Almoner to a party of four hundred Frenchmen, that the Marquis de Beauharnois had joined to eight or nine hundred savages, of all manner of nations, but principally Iroquois, Hurons, Nepissings, and Outaouacs, to whom M. Peset, priest, and Father de la Bertonnière, Jesuit, served as Almoners. These troops, commanded by Monsieur de Lignerie, were commissioned to go and destroy a nation called the Foxes, whose principal habitation is distant from Montreal about four hundred and fifty leagues.

We commenced our march on the 5th of June, 1728, and ascended: nearly a hundred and fifty leagues the great river which bears the name of the Outaouacs, and which is filled with falls and portages. We quitted it at Mataoüan to take the one which empties into Lake Nepissing: it is about thirty leagues in length, and is obstructed by falls and portages, like that of the Outaouacs. From this river we entered into the lake, the width of which is about eight leagues, and from this lake, French River very soon conducts us to Lake Huron, into which it empties, after traversing more than thirty leagues with great rapidity.

As it is not possible for many persons to travel together on these small rivers, it was agreed that those who first passed, should wait for the others at the entrance of Lake Huron, at a place called the Prairie, and which is, indeed, a most beautiful prairie. It is there that I saw, for the first time, the rattlesnake, whose bite is mortal: when I shall have the pleasure of seeing you, I will speak to you more particularly about these animals; it will suffice for the present to tell you that none of our party were incommoded by them.

The twenty-sixth of July, being all reunited, I celebrated mass, which I had deferred until that time, and the next morning, we started for Michillima, or Missillimakinac, which is a station situated between