Page:History of the French in India.djvu/72

 50 THE PERPETUAL COMPANY OF THE INDIES. chap. Another impulse was soon after given to the shares , of the Company of the Indies. The profits of the 1719. coinage for nine years were made over to it, on the pay- ment to the King of fifty millions of francs, by regular instalments, in fifteen months. To raise this sum a new issue of shares became necessary. Consequently au- thority was decreed to the Company to issue 50,000 new shares at a nominal value of 500 francs each. But at that time the first issue of shares, the Jilles, had risen from their issue value of 550 francs to 1,000 francs each in the market, or nearly cent, per cent. To profit itself by this rise, the Company decreed that though issuing these new 50,000 shares at a nominal value of 500 francs each, they would be purchasable only at the current rate of the other shares, or 1,000 francs each. But in addition to this, and still further to increase the value of the old shares, Law caused it to be notified that to obtain these shares at their advanced rates, it would be necessary to own paper of five times the amount applied for, in old shares, and to pay for them, not in specie, but in notes of the Royal Bank. This, the latest issue of shares, received at once from the public the name of petites-filles. The desire to obtain these increased not only the value of the meres, but made everyone anxious to exchange his coin for notes of the Royal Bank. This measure, as it were consum- mated the first part of the financial revolution inaugu- rated by Law. The Government notes, which, in 1715, had been at 70 to 80 per cent, discount, rose actually to par,* and the shares of the Company of the Indies were quoted at 200 per cent premium. In the same year the Company made a most im- portant purchase, for it proved to be almost the only the public the scheme of the Com- credulous, declared that if he were pany of the West in 1717, boasted to accomplish this, he would be that one of its effects would be worthy ot* having statues raised to to raise the depreciated Government him all over France. Yet he did it.
 * When Law, in introducing to notes to par value, the public, in-