Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/234

210 of five hundred livres. This bank was very successful, and a year afterwards its notes were ordered to be received as specie by the royal treasury. From one step to another is always easy, and so it happened that Law's bank was abolished in December, 1718, and the Royal Bank, with Law as director-general, sprang into existence. The same grand speculator was appointed director-general of the Mississippi Company, and both institutions were merged into one.

Our limits do not admit of following the almost incredible career of John Law, and the frenzy of cupidity displayed by the Parisians and others, in the insane attempt to accomplish the payment of their debts, and increase their wealth, by means of an inflated paper currency. The bubble burst after a few years, scattering ruin and distress in every direction: the bank stopped payment in May, 1720, at which time there was paper in circulation, amounting to 2,235,085,590 livres. The whole of it was suddenly reduced to the value of so much waste paper, and no more. Law fled from the fury of the people to Brussels; nearly every thing was lost; he visited England in 1721; left it in 1722, and died in obscurity and poverty at Venice, in 1729. Truly, to use the words of Mr Gayarré, "he who could write in all its details the history of that Mississippi bubble, so fatal in its short-lived duration, would give to the world the most instructive composition, made up of the most amusing, ludicrous, monstrous, and horrible elements that were ever jumbled together!"

In March, 1718, three vessels reached Louisiana, with three companies of infantry and sixty-nine colonists; and in June of the same year, some eight hundred persons, colonists, convicts, and troops, also safely arrived: these were the first installments of the six thousand whites and three thousand negroes which the Mississippi Company agreed to introduce. Bienville was reappointed governor, and soon after sent a party of convicts to clear up a swamp the site of the present city of New Orleans, so named after the Regent of France. A few years later Bienville removed thither the seat of government, and time has justified his foresight and perspicacity in the choice of this locality for the commercial capital of the valley of the Mississippi. Law had reserved to himself twelve miles square on the Arkansas, whither he had sent fifteen hundred German settlers. During the prosperity of the paper scheme, money was profusely spent in promoting enterprise and colonization in Louisiana, but when this scheme exploded these foreign resources suddenly ceased, and the settlers, who were in a great measure dependent on them, were reduced to great distress.

A war having broken out with Spain, Pensacola was twice taken by the French, but in 1721 it was restored again to its former owners, and the River Perdido became the dividing line between Spanish Florida and French Louisiana. A military establishment of about a thousand troops was kept up; and a considerable number of