troller-general of the finance of France by a specious scheme for a bank, an East India Company and a Mississippi Company, by the profits of which the French national debt was to be paid off, a thing then in urgent need of doing, and every one connected with the affair was to make their fortunes, an undertaking always in need of doing in any country. The French Government gave him every encouragement, and in 1716 he opened the bank; in 1719 the shares of that bank were worth more than eighty times the current specie in France; in 1720 that bank burst, spreading commercial ruin. To this may be ascribed the period of paralysis in the Senegal trade from 1719. The Compagnie de Senegal had handed over their interest to the Mississippi Company involved in John Law's bank scheme. After this, up to 1817, France like F. M. the Duke of Wellington anent playing upon the harp, "had other things to do" than attend to West Africa. During the Napoleonic Wars England took all the French possessions in West Africa, but by the treaty of Paris of 1814 she handed back those in Senegal, save the Gambia. The French
and a fertile invention," he, when very young, recommended himself to the King's ministers in Scotland to arrange fiscal matters, then in some confusion from the union of the Kingdoms. His scheme, however, was not adopted. Great at giving other people good advice on money matters, he failed to manage his own. After a gay career in Edinburgh, and gaining himself the title of "Beau Law," he got mixed up in a duel, and fled to the Continent. He was banished from Venice and Genoa for draining the youth of those cities of their money, and wandered about Italy, living on gaming and singular bets and wagers. He proposed his scheme to the Duke of Savoy, who saw by this scheme he could soon, by deceiving his subjects in this manner, get the whole of the money of the kingdom into his possession; but as Law could not explain what would happen then, he was repulsed, and proceeded to Paris, where, under the patronage of the Duc d'Orleans, they found favour with Louis XIV. When his crash came he was exiled, and died in Venice in 1729.
