as she thought it advisable, recovered from her fright, apologized for her intrusion, and confessed the stratagem. Law, who was a gallant man, could no longer resist, and entered her name in his books as the purchaser of a quantity of India stock. A Madame de Bouchè, knowing that Mr. Law was at dinner at a certain house, proceeded thither in her carriage, and gave the alarm of fire; and while everybody was scampering away, she made haste toward him, and he, suspecting the trick, ran off in another direction.

66

A celebrated physician in Paris had bought stock at at unlucky period, and was anxious to sell out. While it was rapidly falling, and his mind was filled with the subject, he was called upon to attend a lady who thought herself unwell. Being shown up stairs, he felt of the lady's pulse, and more intent upon his stock than his patient, exclaimed: "It falls, it falls! good God, it falls continually!" The lady, alarmed, started up, and ringing the bell for assistance, "Oh, doctor!" said she, “I am dying-I am dying! it falls!" "What falls?" inquired the doctor, in amazement. "My pulse-my pulse!" said the lady; "I am dying!" "Calm your apprehensions, my dear madam," said the doctor, "I was speaking of the stocks. I have been so great a loser, and my mind is so disturbed, that I hardly know what I was saying." The effect of all this upon the public mind and the public manners, was overwhelming; the laxity of public morals, conspicuous enough before, became more so; and the pernicious love of gambling diffused itself through society, and bore all public and nearly all private virtue before it.

While this confidence lasted, an impetus was given to trade, which it had never known. Strangers flocked to the capital from every part of the globe, and its population was temporarily increased three hundred and five thousand souls. Housekeepers were obliged to make up beds in garrets, kitchens, and even stables, for the accommodation of lodgers. The looms of the country worked with uncommon activity. Provisions shared the general advance; wages rose in the same proportion. The artizan who had gained his fifteen sous a day, now gained sixty. An illusory prosperity everywhere prevailed, and so dazzled the eyes of the victim, that no one could perceive on the horizon a dark cloud, which announced the approaching storm.

Law, at this time, was by far the most influential person in the state; his wife and daughters were courted by the highest nobility, and their alliance sought by ducal and princely houses.

In 1720, an alarm was created. Some specie was demanded; Law became alarmed—the precious metals had left the kingdom. Coin, for more than five hundred livres, was declared an illegal tender. A council of state was held, and it was ascertained that two thousand six hundred millions of livres were in circulation; and on the 27th of May, the bank stopped payment. The people assailed Law's carriage with stones as he was entering his own door, and but for the dexterity of his coachman, he would have been torn in pieces. On the following day, his wife and

daughters were attacked by the mob, as they were returning in their carriage from the races. The regent being informed of these occurrences, sent him a guard for his protection. Finding his own house, even with this guard, insecure, he repaired to the palace, and took apartments with the regent. He afterward left the kingdom; his estates and library were confiscated, and he died at Venice, in extreme poverty, in 1729.*

Such was the fate of John Law, who had caused several millions of livres to be expended in Illinois, and, for several years, had used the Mississippi valley as the means, or the instrument, of his ambition. Stock-jobbers and speculators had used it also for a similar purpose; and New-Orleans was more famous in Paris when covered with cane-brakes, than it has been since.

Law held, that the currency of a country was the mere "representative of its moving wealth;" that it need not, therefore, of itself possess intrinsic value; that the wealth of a nation may be "indefinitely increased by an arbitrary infusion of paper;" that credit consisted in the “ excess of circulation over immediate resources ;" and, that the "advantage of credit is in the direct ratio of that excess." Hence the whimsical project of collecting the gold and silver of a kingdom into one bank, and supply. ing its place by an exclusive paper currency.

The arbitrary action of Government, which fixed the value of stock, in March, 1720, at nine thousand livres for five hundred, and which forbade certain corporations to invest money in anything else; and prohibited the circulation of gold and silver, except for change; and required all payments to be made in paper, over ten livres; and which punished a person by fine, and exposed his specie to forfeiture, for attempting to convert a bill into metallic currency, was insufficient to sustain fraud and imposition longer. Although the regent's mother was enabled, by this fraud and imposition, to write "that all the king's debts were paid;" France in the end "was impoverished, public and private credit subverted, the income of capitalists annihilated, and labor left without employment." A few wary speculators, it is true, gloried afterward in their wealth, acquired by the toil and misfortunes of the suffering millions; it was, however, a paltry reward for the wretchedness it had caused.

France, however, was not alone in this career of infatuation. The South Sea scheme, devised by Sir John Blount, a man of moderate talents, in England, produced effects in the latter kingdom nearly as ruinous, in 1720, as the Mississippi scheme in France. "Exchange Alley," says Smollet, the historian, "was filled with a strange concourse of statesmen and clergymen, churchmen and dissenters, whigs and tories, physicians, lawyers, tradesmen, and even with a multitude of females. All other professions and employments were utterly neglected, and the public attention wholly engrossed by this and other chimerical schemes, which were known by the denomination of 'bubbles.' A hundred such were pro

The above history of the Company of the Indies, is taken from "The Memoirs of Extraordinary Delusions," by Charles Mackay. Published at London, 1841.

The sums

jected and put in execution, to the ruin of many thousands. proposed to be raised by these expectants, amounted to three hundred millions sterling, which exceeded, at that time, the value of all the lands in England. The nation was so intoxicated with the spirit of adventure, that people became a prey to the grossest delusion. An obscure projector, pretending to have found a very advantageous scheme-which, however, he did not explain-published proposals for a subscription, in which he promised that, in one month, the particulars of his project should be disclosed. In the meantime he declared, that every person paying two guineas should be entitled to a subscription for one hundred pounds, which would produce that sum yearly. In one forenoon this adventurer received a thousand of these subscriptions; and in the evening set out, with his two thousand guineas in his pocket, for another kingdom. During the infatuation produced by this and other infamous schemes, luxury, vice, and profligacy increased to a shocking degree of extravagance. The adventurers, intoxicated by their imaginary wealth, pampered themselves with the rarest dainties, and the most expensive wines, that could be imported. They purchased the most sumptuous furniture, equipage and apparel, though without taste or discernment; they indulged their criminal passions to the most scandalous excess; their discourse was the language of pride, insolence, and the most ridiculous ostentation; they affected to scoff at religion and morality, and even to set Heaven at defiance. It was afterward discovered that large portions of the South Sea stock had been given to several persons in the administration, as well as in the House of Commons, for promoting the passage of the South Sea Act. The ebb," continues Smollet, "of this portentous tide was so violent, that it bore down everything in its way, and an infinite number of families were overwhelmed with ruin. Public credit sustained a terrible shock; the nation was thrown into a dangerous ferment, and nothing was heard but the ravings of grief, disappointment, and despair. Petitions from counties, cities, and boroughs, were presented to the House of Commons, demanding justice against the villainy of the directors; and the whole nation was exasperated to the highest pitch of excitement. At length, in 1721, by the wise and vigorous resolutions of Parliament, the ferment of the people subsided, and the credit of the nation was restored." Our readers may be desirous, perhaps, of knowing what these "wise and vigorous resolutions of Parliament" were, thus spoken of with approbation by the historian. All the estates of the directors and officers of the company, were confiscated by an act of Parlia ment, and applied toward the relief of the unhappy sufferers. Such "wise and vigorous resolutions," if resorted to by a legislative body in any of our States, at the present time, would unquestionably be considered arbitrary and unconstitutional. The times, however, of which we speak, were not those in which law was uniformly heard, or its dictates universally obeyed.

The Mississippi valley, on the dissolution of the India company, in

1730, being retroceded to the crown, its interests were again fostered by Government, and Louis XV. and his minister, Cardinal Fleury, evinced much anxiety in its behalf. Although Louis XIV. had been liberal in his expenditures, and Crozat, whose whole life had been one of successful enterprise, had assumed its direction; and the Mississippi company, aided by boundless but transient credit, had there laid the foundations of all its hopes; and priests and friars, and Jesuit missionaries, had used all their efforts to propitiate the savages; the valley of the Mississippi, fifty years after the expedition of La Salle, was little else than a wilderness. Louisiana at this time, in French geography, included the entire valley of the Mississippi, and its tributary streams. Of course, all west of the Alleghany mountains was regarded by France as a part of her domain. The head-springs of the Alleghany, the Monongahela, the Kanawa, the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Ohio, were claimed to be hers.

The ambitious designs of France at an early day, it was said by the English colonists, interfered with grants made by the British crown; and in 1731, soon after the French had erected a fort at Crown-Point, in the State of New-York, James Logan, secretary of Pennsylvania, prepared a memorial in relation to the state of the British plantations. This was communicated by a member of Parliament to Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister of England; who, at that time, was "too much concerned for his own standing, to lay anything to heart that was at so great a distance." France was, therefore, permitted to establish her influence throughout the whole valley of the Ohio, and to build strong houses for the Indians, without molestation. The Shawnees were met by Canadian traders, and their chiefs invited to visit the French governor at Montreal. Having done so, Joseph Soncaire, a wily emissary from New-France, descended the Ohio with them, and the whole tribe put themselves under the protection of Louis XV. Fort Massac, or Massacre, was thereupon erected on the north bank of the Ohio, in the State of Illinois, near the dividing-line between Johnson and Pope counties in this State, nine miles below the mouth of the Tennessee river, and about forty miles above its junction with the Mississippi.

The savages becoming afterward dissatisfied with the French, by a curious stratagem effected its capture. A number of Indians appeared in the daytime, on the opposite side of the river, each of whom was covered with a bear-skin, and walked on all fours; the French, supposing them to be bears, crossed the river with a considerable force, in pursuit of the supposed bears, and the remainder of the troops left their quarters, and resorted to the bank of the river in front of the garrison, to observe the sport. In the meantime, a large body of warriors, who were concealed in the woods near by, came silently up behind the fort, and entered it without opposition;, and a few only of the French garrison escaped the

carnage.

The French afterward built another fort on the same ground, and, in

* See Stoddart's Sketches of Louisiana.

commemoration of this disastrous event, called it Fort Massac, or Massacre, which name it still retains.*

It was occupied by the French until about 1750, when it was abandoned. After the revolutionary war, it was repaired by the Americans, and garrisoned for several years; but is now, like most of the ancient forts in this country, a heap of ruins.

During the war between England and France, which terminated in 1748 by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the petty conflicts in America were lost in the conflagration of Europe; and nothing in particular occurred which affected the interests or prosperity of Illinois. It was not, however, so in the war of 1756, which terminated by the treaty of Paris, in 1763. This State, including all of the Mississippi valley east of the river, was then ceded to England; and the lilies of France waved no longer upon its prairies.

Inasmuch, then, as the English title to Illinois was settled on the plains of Abraham, where the gallant Wolf fell, and expired in the arms of victory, a brief history of the campaign, so far as it affects the West, cannot be unwelcome.

NOTE.

In 1756, at which time it was rebuilt by the government of France, it was half-a-mile from the water's edge; in 1776, eighty paces; in 1770, an English officer, in speaking of Fort Chartres, observed, "The bank of the Mississippi is continually falling in, being worn away by the current, which has been turned from its course by a sand-bank, now increased to a considerable island, covered with willows."

In 1772, the river (Mississippi) inundated its banks, and formed a channel so near the fort, that one side of it, and two of its bastions, were thrown down. This circumstance induced the British, by whom it was occupied as a garrison, to abandon it. It is now a heap of ruins. Trees of considerable magnitude are growing within its walls, and its only use is, to furnish building materials for the neighborhood.

Captain Pittman, a British officer, whose "History of the European settlements on the Mississippi," was published in 1770, speaking of this fort, says:

"Fort Chartres, when it belonged to France, was the seat of government of Illinois. The head-quarters of the English commanding officer is now here. It is an irregular quadrangle; the sides of the exterior polygon, are four hundred and ninety feet. It is built of stone, and plastered over, and is only designed as a defence against the Indians. The walls are two feet and two inches thick, and are pierced with loop-holes, at regular distances, for cann annon in the faces, and two in the flanks of each bastion. The ditch has never been finished. The entrance to the fort is through a very handsome rustic gate. Within the walls is a banquette raised three feet, for the men to stand on, when they fire through the loop-holes. The buildings within the fort, are a commandant's and commissary's house, the magazine of stores, corps de guarde, and two barracks; these occupy the square."

After describing the other buildings minutely, Captain Pittman concludes as follows: "It is generally believed, that this is the most convenient, and best built fort in North Amer. ica."

When the Western or royal India company was in possession of Illinois, claiming title thereto from the crown of France, several extensive grants of land were made to individuals, which have since been confirmed by the government of the United States. Some thousands of acres are thus held, at the present day.