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44 THE PERPETUAL COMPANY OF THE INDIES. chap, favour, and a rush to partake of the advantages it - offered. The confidence in its stability became so 1717. strong, that, although it possessed a capital of but six millions, Law saw himself enabled, within a short time of its establishment, to issue notes to the value of fif- teen or twenty millions. The credit of the bank was further augmented by the publication, on April 15, 1717, of a decree, which commanded all the agents intrusted with the management of the Royal revenues, to receive the notes of the bank as money, and to cash such notes at sight to the extent to which cash was available. The success of the bank had already greatly relieved the State credit, for it being a condition of the purchase of bank shares that they should be paid for, three- fourths in Government notes, a run had ensued upon these securities, and they had risen greatly in favour. The revival of credit stimulated the other industries of the nation, and commerce and trade, shortly before so depressed, began to resume the position natural to a state of prosperity. But this was only a beginning. Its success stimu- lated Law to propose, and the Regent and the public to accept, the more speculative schemes which were formed by his teeming brain. The district of Louisana in North xlmerica, discovered in 1541, and traversed by M. de Salle in 1682, seemed to Law to offer a basis upon which to erect a scheme which would secure immense commercial advantages to France, and at the same time benefit her finances. The idea itself was not new, for one Antoine Crozat, a speculative mer- chant, had already attempted the task of colonisation, and had failed. He was too willing therefore to make over his privileges to Law. But if the idea was not new, the treatment proposed by Law was startling by its novelty. He declared it would be necessary to raise a Sovereign Company, rivalling the companies of Eng-