s that had led to it, had not been rendered more
available in discovering a remedy.

At a meeting of the Council of Finance and the General Council of the
Regency, documents were laid upon the table, from which it appeared that
the amount of notes in circulation was 2700 millions. The regent was
called upon to explain how it happened that there was a discrepancy
between the dates at which these issues were made and those of the edicts
by which they were authorised. He might have safely taken the whole blame
upon himself, but he preferred that an absent man should bear a share of
it; and he therefore stated that Law, upon his own authority, had issued
1200 millions of notes at different times, and that he (the regent),
seeing that the thing had been irrevocably done, had screened Law by
antedating the decrees of the council which authorised the augmentation.
It would have been more to his credit if he had told the whole truth while
he was 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
_bona 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.

[Illustration: D'ARGENSON.]

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
u