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Rh to diminish its amount. On the 21st of May, the death-blow was given to the whole gigantic system of our Scottish projector, by an edict which announced that a progressive reduction of the India company's action, and of bank-notes, was to take place from that day till the 1st of December, when it was declared that the bank-notes should remain fixed at one half of their present value, and the actions at four-ninths. Law, whose influence with the government was now rapidly sinking, or rather was annihilated, felt himself too weak to resist this measure, and actually consented to announce it himself. The public eye was now opened in one instant to the delusion which had been practised upon it, and the next day every one was anxious to get rid of his paper-money at any sacrifice. The catastrophe, though inevitable in the nature of things, was hastened by the artifices of the cardinal Dubois, who used every means to injure Law in the opinion of the regent; and by the irritation of the finance-general, and the parliament of Paris, who regarded the foreign projector as their bitter enemy. The united efforts of such a powerful party appear to have made a deep impression on the mind of the regent, who, in a letter of lord Stair's, dated 12th March, 1720, is represented as abusing the comptroller cruelly to his face, and even threatening him with the Bastile. The same authority informs us that the minister himself was at this period reeling under the weight of that complicated and stupendous system of which he now found himself the prime support and mover. "Law's head is so heated," he writes, "that he does not sleep at nights, and has formal fits of frenzy. He gets out of bed almost every night, and runs stark-staring mad about the room making a terrible noise,—sometimes singing and dancing,—at other times swearing, staring, and stamping, quite out of himself. Some nights ago, his wife, who had come into the room upon the noise he made, was forced to ring the bell for people to come to her assistance. The officer of Law's guard was the first that came, and found Law in his shirt, who had set two chairs in the middle of the room, and was dancing round them quite out of his wits."

The consequences of this rash edict were frightful; the government was upbraided for having been the first to impeach that credit to which it had itself given original existence, and charged with the design to ruin the fortunes of the citizens; seditious and inflammatory libels were posted throughout the streets; the mob assailed the hotels of Law and other members of the cabinet; and even the life of the regent himself was threatened. In this emergency, the parliament assembled on the 27th of May, and terrified at the consequences of their own measures, were about to petition the regent to revoke the unfortunate edict; but while yet deliberating with this purpose, an officer announced to them that the paper had been restored to its former value, by a new proclamation. However, if the first step had been bad, the second was little less weak and unwary. To declare that the actions and billets had resumed their full value, was doing nothing of real consequence to allay the ferment of the public mind; for such a measure was founded on no principle which could operate in the slightest degree to restore to paper-money the confidence it had lost; it was doing nothing to recompense those who had already suffered injury, and it was effectually securing the ruin of all others on whom the value- less paper could now be fixed as a legal tender. And to add to all this confusion and distress, the repositories of the bank were sealed up the same day, under pretence of examining the books, but in reality to prevent the specie from being paid away in exchange for notes. At last, after the first moments of alarm and outrage were over, the regent ventured to resume those expressions of confidence towards Law which he had been compelled to withhold from him for a time; he received him in his own box at the opera, and gave him a guard to