[Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME: GARDENS OF THE HOTEL DE SOISSONS, 1720.]
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.
VOLUME I.
[Illustration: THE BUBBLERS' ARMS--PROSPERITY.]
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS
AND THE
MADNESS OF CROWDS.
BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF "EGERIA," "THE SALAMANDRINE," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.
VOL. I.
N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce, En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse; Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins. BOILEAU.
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.
CONTENTS.
THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.
John Law; his birth and youthful career--Duel between Law and Wilson--Law's escape from the King's Bench--The "Land-bank"--Law's gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans--State of France after the reign of Louis XIV.--Paper money instituted in that country by Law--Enthusiasm of the French people at the Mississippi Scheme--Marshal Villars--Stratagems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law--Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock--Dreadful murders--Law created comptroller-general of finances--Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris--Financial difficulties commence--Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind--Payment stopped at the bank--Law dismissed from the ministry--Payments made in specie--Law and the Regent satirised in song--Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme--Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice--Death of the Regent--Law obliged to resort again to gambling--His death at Venice
THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE.
Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford--Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement--Mr. Walpole--Sir John Blunt--Great demand for shares--Innumerable "Bubbles"--List of nefarious projects and bubbles--Great rise in South-sea stock--Sudden fall--General meeting of the directors--Fearful climax of the South-sea expedition--Its effects on society--Uproar in the House of Commons--Escape of Knight--Apprehension of Sir John Blunt--Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont--His second escape--Persons connected with the scheme examined--Their respective punishments--Concluding remarks
THE TULIPOMANIA.
Conrad Gesner--Tulips brought from Vienna to England--Rage for the tulip among the Dutch--Its great value--Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip--Regular marts for tulips--Tulips employed as a means of speculation--Great depreciation in their value--End of the mania
THE ALCHYMISTS.
Introductory remarks--Pretended antiquity of the art--Geber--Alfarabi--Avicenna--Albertus Magnus--Thomas Aquinas--Artephius--Alain de Lisle--Arnold de Villeneuve--Pietro d'Apone--Raymond Lulli--Roger Bacon--Pope John XXII.--Jean de Meung--Nicholas Flamel--George Ripley--Basil Valentine--Bernard of Trèves--Trithemius--The Maréchal de Rays--Jacques Coeur--Inferior adepts--Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Augurello--Cornelius Agrippa--Paracelsus--George Agricola--Denys Zachaire--Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly--The Cosmopolite--Sendivogius--The Rosicrucians--Michael Mayer--Robert Fludd--Jacob Böhmen--John Heydon--Joseph Francis Borri--Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century--Delisle--Albert Aluys--Count de St. Germain--Cagliostro--Present state of the science
MODERN PROPHECIES.
Terror of the approaching day of judgment--A comet the signal of that day--The prophecy of Whiston--The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at that event--The plague in Milan--Fortune-tellers and Astrologers--Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames--Mother Shipton--Merlin--Heywood--Peter of Pontefract--Robert Nixon--Almanac-makers
FORTUNE-TELLING.
Presumption and weakness of man--Union of Fortune-tellers and Alchymists--Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of Elizabeth to William and Mary--Lilly the astrologer consulted by the House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London--Encouragement of the art in France and Germany--Nostradamus--Basil of Florence--Antiochus Tibertus--Kepler--Necromancy--Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve--Geomancy--Augury--Divination: list of various species of divination--Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of dreams)--Omens
THE MAGNETISERS.
The influence of imagination in curing diseases--Mineral magnetisers--Paracelsus--Kircher the Jesuit--Sebastian Wirdig--William Maxwell--The Convulsionaries of St. Medard--Father Hell--Mesmer, the founder of Animal Magnetism--D'Eslon, his disciple--M. de Puysegur--Dr. Mainauduc's success in London--Holloway, Loutherbourg, Mary Pratt, &c.--Perkins's "Metallic Tractors"--Decline of the science
INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND RELIGION ON THE HAIR AND BEARD.
Early modes of wearing the hair and beard--Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls--Louis VII.'s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France--Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers--Peter the Great--His tax upon beards--Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830--The King of Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved--Examples from Bayeux tapestry
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS IN VOL. I.
Frontispiece--Gardens of the Hotel de Soissons. (From a print in Mr. Hawkins' collection.)
Vignette--The Bubblers' Arms, Prosperity. (_Bubblers' Mirror, or England's Folly_.)
John Law. (From a rare print by Leon Schenk. 1720)
The Regent D'Orleans
Old Palais Royal from the Garden. (From a scarce print, _circa_ 1720)
Law's House; Rue de Quincampoix. (From Nodier's _Paris_)
Humpbacked Man hiring himself as a Table
Hôtel de Soissons. (From Nodier's _Paris_)
The Coach upset
Murder of a Broker by Count D'Horn
John Law as Atlas. (From _England under the House of Hanover_)
Caricature--Lucifer's new Row Barge
Procession of Miners for the Mississippi
The Chancellor D'Aguesseau
Caricature--Law in a Car drawn by Cocks
M. D'Argenson
Caricature--Neck or Nothing, or Downfall of the Mississippi Company
The South-Sea House. (From a print, _circa_ 1750)
Harley Earl of Oxford
Sir Robert Walpole
Cornhill. (Print, _circa_ 1720)
Stock-jobbing Card, or the Humours of Change Alley. 1720. (From the _Bubblers' Medley_)
Caricature--People climbing the Tree of Fortune. (From the _Bubblers' Medley_)
The Gateway to Merchant Tailors' Hall. (Gateway from old print)
Mr. Secretary Craggs
Caricature--Beggars on Horseback. (From the _Bubblers' Medley_)
Caricature--Britannia stript by a South-Sea Director
Caricature--The Brabant Screen. (Copied from a rare print of the time, in the collection of E. Hawkins, Esq., F.S.A.)
Bonfires on Tower Hill
The Earl of Sunderland
Caricature--Emblematic Print of the South-Sea Scheme. (From a print by Hogarth)
Caricature--Bubblers' Arms: Despair. (From _Bubblers' Mirror, or England's Glory_)
Conrad Gesner
The Alchymist. (From print after Teniers)
Albertus Magnus
Arnold de Villeneuve
Raymond Lulli
House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges. (From _Sommerard's Album_)
Cornelius Agrippa
Paracelsus
Dr. Dee
Dr. Dee's Show-stone and Magic Crystal. (Originals in the possession of Lord Londesborough and British Museum)
Innspruck. (From Nodier's _Paris_)
House of Cagliostro (Rue de Clery, No. 278), Paris
Mother Shipton's House
Henry Andrews, the original "Francis Moore, physician"
Nostradamus. (From the frontispiece to a collection of his Prophecies, published at Amsterdam A.D. 1666)
Serlo clipping Henry I.'s hair
Peter the Great
Bayeux Tapestry
PREFACE.
In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the philosopher's stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originated,--that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate them entirely from the popular mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
Some of the subjects introduced may be familiar to the reader; but the Author hopes that sufficient novelty of detail will be found even in these, to render them acceptable, while they could not be wholly omitted in justice to the subject of which it was proposed to treat. The memoirs of the South-Sea madness and the Mississippi delusion are more complete and copious than are to be found elsewhere; and the same may be said of the history of the Witch Mania, which contains an account of its terrific progress in Germany, a part of the subject which has been left comparatively untouched by Sir Walter Scott in his _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, the most important that have yet appeared on this fearful but most interesting subject.
Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have lasted so long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would scarcely suffice to detail their history. The present may be considered more of a miscellany of delusions than a history--a chapter only in the great and awful book of human folly which yet remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he would write in five hundred volumes! Interspersed are sketches of some lighter matters,--amusing instances of the imitativeness and wrongheadedness of the people, rather than examples of folly and delusion.
Religious matters have been purposely excluded as incompatible with the limits prescribed to the present work; a mere list of them would alone be sufficient to occupy a volume.
[Illustration: JOHN LAW.]
MONEY MANIA.--THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.
Some in clandestine companies combine; Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line; With air and empty names beguile the town, And raise new credits first, then cry 'em down; Divide the empty nothing into shares, And set the crowd together by the ears.--_Defoe_.
The personal character and career of one man are so intimately connected with the great scheme of the years 1719 and 1720, that a history of the Mississippi madness can have no fitter introduction than a sketch of the life of its great author John Law. Historians are divided in opinion as to whether they should designate him a knave or a madman. Both epithets were unsparingly applied to him in his lifetime, and while the unhappy consequences of his projects were still deeply felt. Posterity, however, has found reason to doubt the justice of the accusation, and to confess that John Law was neither knave nor madman, but one more deceived than deceiving, more sinned against than sinning. He was thoroughly acquainted with the philosophy and true principles of credit. He understood the monetary question better than any man of his day; and if his system fell with a crash so tremendous, it was not so much his fault as that of the people amongst whom he had erected it. He did not calculate upon the avaricious frenzy of a whole nation; he did not see that confidence, like mistrust, could be increased almost _ad infinitum_, and that hope was as extravagant as fear. How was he to foretell that the French people, like the man in the fable, would kill, in their frantic eagerness, the fine goose he had brought to lay them so many golden eggs? His fate was like that which may be supposed to have overtaken the first adventurous boatman who rowed from Erie to Ontario. Broad and smooth was the river on which he embarked; rapid and pleasant was his progress; and who was to stay him in his career? Alas for him! the cataract was nigh. He saw, when it was too late, that the tide which wafted him so joyously along was a tide of destruction; and when he endeavoured to retrace his way, he found that the current was too strong for his weak efforts to stem, and that he drew nearer every instant to the tremendous falls. Down he went over the sharp rocks, and the waters with him. _He_ was dashed to pieces with his bark, but the waters, maddened and turned to foam by the rough descent, only boiled and bubbled for a time, and then flowed on again as smoothly as ever. Just so it was with Law and the French people. He was the boatman, and they were the waters.
John Law was born at Edinburgh in the year 1671. His father was the younger son of an ancient family in Fife, and carried on the business of a goldsmith and banker. He amassed considerable wealth in his trade, sufficient to enable him to gratify the wish, so common among his countrymen, of adding a territorial designation to his name. He purchased with this view the estates of Lauriston and Randleston, on the Firth of Forth, on the borders of West and Mid Lothian, and was thenceforth known as Law of Lauriston. The subject of our memoir, being the eldest son, was received into his father's counting-house at the age of fourteen, and for three years laboured hard to acquire an insight into the principles of banking as then carried on in Scotland. He had always manifested great love for the study of numbers, and his proficiency in the mathematics was considered extraordinary in one of his tender years. At the age of seventeen he was tall, strong, and well made; and his face, although deeply scarred with the small-pox, was agreeable in its expression, and full of intelligence. At this time he began to neglect his business, and becoming vain of his person, indulged in considerable extravagance of attire. He was a great favourite with the ladies, by whom he was called Beau Law; while the other sex, despising his foppery, nicknamed him Jessamy John. At the death of his father, which happened in 1688, he withdrew entirely from the desk, which had become so irksome, and being possessed of the revenues of the paternal estate of Lauriston, he proceeded to London, to see the world.
He was now very young, very vain, good-looking, tolerably rich, and quite uncontrolled. It is no wonder that, on his arrival in the capital, he should launch out into extravagance. He soon became a regular frequenter of the gaming-houses, and by pursuing a certain plan, based upon some abstruse calculation of chances, he contrived to gain considerable sums. All the gamblers envied him his luck, and many made it a point to watch his play, and stake their money on the same chances. In affairs of gallantry he was equally fortunate; ladies of the first rank smiled graciously upon the handsome Scotchman--the young, the rich, the witty, and the obliging. But all these successes only paved the way for reverses. After he had been for nine years exposed to the dangerous attractions of the gay life he was leading, he became an irrecoverable gambler. As his love of play increased in violence, it diminished in prudence. Great losses were only to be repaired by still greater ventures, and one unhappy day he lost more than he could repay without mortgaging his family estate. To that step he was driven at last. At the same time his gallantry brought him into trouble. A love affair, or slight flirtation, with a lady of the name of Villiers,[1] exposed him to the resentment of a Mr. Wilson, by whom he was challenged to fight a duel. Law accepted, and had the ill fortune to shoot his antagonist dead upon the spot. He was arrested the same day, and brought to trial for murder by the relatives of Mr. Wilson. He was afterwards found guilty, and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to a fine, upon the ground that the offence only amounted to manslaughter. An appeal being lodged by a brother of the deceased, Law was detained in the King's Bench, whence, by some means or other, which he never explained, he contrived to escape; and an action being instituted against the sheriffs, he was advertised in the Gazette, and a reward offered for his apprehension. He was described as "Captain John Law, a Scotchman, aged twenty-six; a very tall, black, lean man; well shaped, above six feet high, with large pock-holes in his face; big nosed, and speaking broad and loud." As this was rather a caricature than a description of him, it has been supposed that it was drawn up with a view to favour his escape. He succeeded in reaching the Continent, where he travelled for three years, and devoted much of his attention to the monetary and banking affairs of the countries through which he passed. He stayed a few months in Amsterdam, and speculated to some extent in the funds. His mornings were devoted to the study of finance and the principles of trade, and his evenings to the gaming-house. It is generally believed that he returned to Edinburgh in the year 1700. It is certain that he published in that city his _Proposals and Reasons for constituting a Council of Trade_. This pamphlet did not excite much attention.
[1] Miss Elizabeth Villiers, afterwards Countess of Orkney.
In a short time afterwards he published a project for establishing what he called a Land-bank,[2] the notes issued by which were never to exceed the value of the entire lands of the state, upon ordinary interest, or were to be equal in value to the land, with the right to enter into possession at a certain time. The project excited a good deal of discussion in the Scottish Parliament, and a motion for the establishment of such a bank was brought forward by a neutral party, called the Squadrone, whom Law had interested in his favour. The Parliament ultimately passed a resolution to the effect, that, to establish any kind of paper credit, so as to force it to pass, was an improper expedient for the nation.
[2] The wits of the day called it a _sand-bank_, which would wreck the vessel of the state.
Upon the failure of this project, and of his efforts to procure a pardon for the murder of Mr. Wilson, Law withdrew to the Continent, and resumed his old habits of gaming. For fourteen years he continued to roam about, in Flanders, Holland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and France. He soon became intimately acquainted with the extent of the trade and resources of each, and daily more confirmed in his opinion that no country could prosper without a paper currency. During the whole of this time he appears to have chiefly supported himself by successful play. At every gambling-house of note in the capitals of Europe he was known and appreciated as one better skilled in the intricacies of chance than any other man of the day. It is stated in the _Biographie Universelle_ that he was expelled, first from Venice, and afterwards from Genoa, by the magistrates, who thought him a visitor too dangerous for the youth of those cities. During his residence in Paris he rendered himself obnoxious to D'Argenson, the lieutenant-general of the police, by whom he was ordered to quit the capital. This did not take place, however, before he had made the acquaintance, in the saloons, of the Duke de Vendôme, the Prince de Conti, and of the gay Duke of Orleans, the latter of whom was destined afterwards to exercise so much influence over his fate. The Duke of Orleans was pleased with the vivacity and good sense of the Scottish adventurer, while the latter was no less pleased with the wit and amiability of a prince who promised to become his patron. They were often thrown into each other's society, and Law seized every opportunity to instil his financial doctrines into the mind of one whose proximity to the throne pointed him out as destined, at no very distant date, to play an important part in the government.
[Illustration: THE REGENT OF FRANCE.]
Shortly before the death of Louis XIV., or, as some say, in 1708, Law proposed a scheme of finance to Desmarets, the comptroller. Louis is reported to have inquired whether the projector were a Catholic, and on being answered in the negative, to have declined having any thing to do with him.[3]
[3] This anecdote, which is related in the correspondence of Madame de Bavière, Duchess of Orleans and mother of the Regent, is discredited by Lord John Russell in his _History of the principal States of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht_; for what reason he does not inform us. There is no doubt that Law proposed his scheme to Desmarets, and that Louis refused to hear of it. The reason given for the refusal is quite consistent with the character of that bigoted and tyrannical monarch.
It was after this repulse that he visited Italy. His mind being still occupied with schemes of finance, he proposed to Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy, to establish his land-bank in that country. The duke replied that his dominions were too circumscribed for the execution of so great a project, and that he was by far too poor a potentate to be ruined. He advised him, however, to try the king of France once more; for he was sure, if he knew any thing of the French character, that the people would be delighted with a plan, not only so new, but so plausible.
Louis XIV. died in 1715, and the heir to the throne being an infant only seven years of age, the Duke of Orleans assumed the reins of government, as regent, during his minority. Law now found himself in a more favourable position. The tide in his affairs had come, which, taken at the flood, was to waft him on to fortune. The regent was his friend, already acquainted with his theory and pretensions, and inclined, moreover, to aid him in any efforts to restore the wounded credit of France, bowed down to the earth by the extravagance of the long reign of Louis XIV.
Hardly was that monarch laid in his grave ere the popular hatred, suppressed so long, burst forth against his memory. He who, during his life, had been flattered with an excess of adulation, to which history scarcely offers a parallel, was now cursed as a tyrant, a bigot, and a plunderer. His statues were pelted and disfigured; his effigies torn down, amid the execrations of the populace, and his name rendered synonymous with selfishness and oppression. The glory of his arms was forgotten, and nothing was remembered but his reverses, his extravagance, and his cruelty.
The finances of the country were in a state of the utmost disorder. A profuse and corrupt monarch, whose profuseness and corruption were imitated by almost every functionary, from the highest to the lowest grade, had brought France to the verge of ruin. The national debt amounted to 3000 millions of livres, the revenue to 145 millions, and the expenses of government to 142 millions per annum; leaving only three millions to pay the interest upon 3000 millions. The first care of the regent was to discover a remedy for an evil of such magnitude, and a council was early summoned to take the matter into consideration. The Duke de St. Simon was of opinion that nothing could save the country from revolution but a remedy at once bold and dangerous. He advised the regent to convoke the states-general, and declare a national bankruptcy. The Duke de Noailles, a man of accommodating principles, an accomplished courtier, and totally averse from giving himself any trouble or annoyance that ingenuity could escape from, opposed the project of St. Simon with all his influence. He represented the expedient as alike dishonest and ruinous. The regent was of the same opinion, and this desperate remedy fell to the ground.
The measures ultimately adopted, though they promised fair, only aggravated the evil. The first, and most dishonest measure was of no advantage to the state. A recoinage was ordered, by which the currency was depreciated one-fifth; those who took a thousand pieces of gold or silver to the mint received back an amount of coin of the same nominal value, but only four-fifths of the weight of metal. By this contrivance the treasury gained seventy-two millions of livres, and all the commercial operations of the country were disordered. A trifling diminution of the taxes silenced the clamours of the people, and for the slight present advantage the great prospective evil was forgotten.
A Chamber of Justice was next instituted to inquire into the malversations of the loan-contractors and the farmers of the revenues. Tax-collectors are never very popular in any country, but those of France at this period deserved all the odium with which they were loaded. As soon as these farmers-general, with all their hosts of subordinate agents, called _maltôtiers_,[4] were called to account for their misdeeds, the most extravagant joy took possession of the nation. The Chamber of Justice, instituted chiefly for this purpose, was endowed with very extensive powers. It was composed of the presidents and councils of the parliament, the judges of the Courts of Aid and of Requests, and the officers of the Chamber of Account, under the general presidence of the minister of finance. Informers were encouraged to give evidence against the offenders by the promise of one-fifth part of the fines and confiscations. A tenth of all concealed effects belonging to the guilty was promised to such as should furnish the means of discovering them.
[4] From _maltôte_, an oppressive tax.
The promulgation of the edict constituting this court caused a degree of consternation among those principally concerned, which can only be accounted for on the supposition that their peculation had been enormous. But they met with no sympathy. The proceedings against them justified their terror. The Bastille was soon unable to contain the prisoners that were sent to it, and the gaols all over the country teemed with guilty or suspected persons. An order was issued to all innkeepers and postmasters to refuse horses to such as endeavoured to seek safety in flight; and all persons were forbidden, under heavy fines, to harbour them or favour their evasion. Some were condemned to the pillory, others to the galleys, and the least guilty to fine and imprisonment. One only, Samuel Bernard, a rich banker and farmer-general of a province remote from the capital, was sentenced to death. So great had been the illegal profits of this man,--looked upon as the tyrant and oppressor of his district,--that he offered six millions of livres, or 250,000l. sterling, to be allowed to escape.
His bribe was refused, and he suffered the penalty of death. Others, perhaps more guilty, were more fortunate. Confiscation, owing to the concealment of their treasures by the delinquents, often produced less money than a fine. The severity of the government relaxed, and fines, under the denomination of taxes, were indiscriminately levied upon all offenders; but so corrupt was every department of the administration, that the country benefited but little by the sums which thus flowed into the treasury. Courtiers and courtiers' wives and mistresses came in for the chief share of the spoils. One contractor had been taxed, in proportion to his wealth and guilt, at the sum of twelve millions of livres. The Count ----, a man of some weight in the government, called upon him, and offered to procure a remission of the fine if he would give him a hundred thousand crowns. "Vous êtes trop tard, mon ami," replied the financier; "I have already made a bargain with your wife for fifty thousand."[5]
[5] This anecdote is related by M. de la Hode, in his _Life of Philippe of Orleans_. It would have looked more authentic if he had given the names of the dishonest contractor and the still more dishonest minister. But M. de la Hode's book is liable to the same objection as most of the French memoirs of that and of subsequent periods. It is sufficient with most of them that an anecdote be _ben trovato_; the _vero_ is but matter of secondary consideration.
About a hundred and eighty millions of livres were levied in this manner, of which eighty were applied in payment of the debts contracted by the government. The remainder found its way into the pockets of the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon, writing on this subject, says,--"We hear every day of some new grant of the regent. The people murmur very much at this mode of employing the money taken from the peculators." The people, who, after the first burst of their resentment is over, generally express a sympathy for the weak, were indignant that so much severity should be used to so little purpose. They did not see the justice of robbing one set of rogues to fatten another. In a few months all the more guilty had been brought to punishment, and the Chamber of Justice looked for victims in humbler walks of life. Charges of fraud and extortion were brought against tradesmen of good character in consequence of the great inducements held out to common informers. They were compelled to lay open their affairs before this tribunal in order to establish their innocence. The voice of complaint resounded from every side; and at the expiration of a year the government found it advisable to discontinue further proceedings. The Chamber of Justice was suppressed, and a general amnesty granted to all against whom no charges had yet been preferred.
In the midst of this financial confusion Law appeared upon the scene. No man felt more deeply than the regent the deplorable state of the country, but no man could be more averse from putting his shoulders manfully to the wheel. He disliked business; he signed official documents without proper examination, and trusted to others what he should have undertaken himself. The cares inseparable from his high office were burdensome to him. He saw that something was necessary to be done; but he lacked the energy to do it, and had not virtue enough to sacrifice his ease and his pleasures in the attempt. No wonder that, with this character, he listened favourably to the mighty projects, so easy of execution, of the clever adventurer whom he had formerly known, and whose talents he appreciated.