Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/311

RICHARD CANTILLON came back in 1695 to 'make his peace and sollicit for his estate.' He was committed to Newgate, and died there the following March. ? Olive was an intriguing spirit in the councils of the Old Pretender. As an adventuress at the Court of the Regent, with whom she was a favourite, her reputation was sure to suffer, and historians have treated it with severity. 2 In a letter to Cantilion, dated Paris, Good Friday (17237), the Abl? Maurice assures his friend that ' la prin[cesse] est au fait de notre creature,' which, the context shows, means that she had been reassured as to Mrs. Hughes's assertions. In the same letter the Abb? says that 'Renny MacDonnel has been to William Law's to ask for thirty-four actions belonging to the Duke of Ormond. After putting him off several times, Law told him that you have them, as a deposit for the money he owes you. Renny begs you, for love of the Duke, to say if this is true or false.' The impression left on the mind by a perusal of Cantillon's letters is that the writer was possessed of great clearness and grasp, quick to penetrate ambiguity or weakness of argument, able at combination and calculation, and so thorough a master. of the foreign exchanges that his speculations exhibit a scientific prevision amounting almost to certainty. His position with respect to the actions was that, not being distinctively numbered, they were kept indiscriminately; but that the firm had always enough on hand to supply a proper number of actions to those who had the right to demand them. If, indeed, they had been bound to restore the specific actions deposited, it would have been impos- sible for them to carry out the order of any client who wished his actions sold, lest some other depositor should claim those particular actions as his own. But, when all has been said, it must be admitted that Cantillon's strategy was unscrupulous. Though he kept on the safe side of the law, his letters of April and May 1720, and May 1721, quoted above, show him in an unpleasant light. His former cashier, Verdon, describes him as 'a Tyrant whom it would be more Justice and Charity to crush than to be the least usefull to.' On the other hand, he was very popular with his staunch friends. The openness to which he himself confesses ' I am commonly too frank '--was, very likely, the cause of his quarrel with John Law; for we find evidence that Cantilion was in the habit of decrying Law's paper schemes. He told witnesses at Paris ' he had no good Opinion of the Actions, and believed ? N. L?ttrell. A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 1671-1714. Oxford, 1857, iii. 558, 554; iv. $1. ? See e.g. Bolingbroke's Letter to Sir W. Windham, 1753, pp. 124, 145, 173, &c. No. 2. VOL. ? V