Page:Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds Vol 1.djvu/58

42 about it, and acknowledged that it was mainly through his extravagance and impatience that Law had been induced to overstep the bounds of safe speculation. It was also ascertained that the national debt, on the 1st of January 1721, amounted to upwards of 3100 millions of livres, or more than 124,000,000l. sterling, the interest upon which was 3,196,000l. A commission, or visa, was forthwith appointed to examine into all the securities of the state creditors, who were to be divided into five classes; the first four comprising those who had purchased their securities with real effects, and, the latter comprising those who could give no proofs that the transactions they had entered into were real and bonâ fide. The securities of the latter were ordered to be destroyed, while those of the first four classes were subjected to a most rigid and jealous scrutiny. The result of the labours of the visa, was a report, in which they counselled the reduction of the interest upon these securities to fifty-six millions of livres. They justified, this, advice by a statement of the various acts of peculation and extortion which they had discovered; and an edict to that effect was accordingly published and duly registered by the parliaments of the kingdom.

Another tribunal was afterwards established, under the title of the Chambre de l'Arsenal, which took cognisance of all the malversations committed in the financial departments of the government, during the late unhappy period. A Master of Requests, named Falhonet, together with the Abbé Clement, and two clerks in their employ, had been concerned in divers acts of peculation to the amount of upwards of a million of livres. The first two were sentenced to be beheaded, and the latter to be hanged; but their punishment was afterwards commuted into imprisonment for life in the Bastille. Numerous other acts of dishonesty were discovered, and punished, by fine and imprisonment.

D'Argenson shared with Law and the regent the unpopularity which had alighted upon all those concerned in the Mississippi madness. He was dismissed from his post of Chancellor to make room for D'Aguesseau; but he retained the title of Keeper of the Seals, and