Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [64]
By early 1720, numbers of emigrants had dwindled to the point at which Law was having to recruit large numbers of foreigners: “A great many Scotch rebels are to be employed there and I am told they have got people from Ireland and will endeavour to get more,” observed Daniel Pulteney. But although Irish, Scottish, Swiss, German, and other non-French settlers were more easily lured aboard the new Mississippi Company vessels with financial incentives, the press gangs and atrocities continued. Some attempt was made to control the worst excesses of the archers by forcing them to operate in groups rather than individually. To highlight the improvement they were given smart new uniforms—blue coats and silver-banded tricorn hats—but such token measures did nothing to diminish their brutality. Inevitably, Law was seen as condoning their activities, and public opinion erupted against him. “One could wonder that Mr. Law who cannot but be extremely sensible how very obnoxious he is already to the generality of people here should yet provoke them more and more every day by some fresh hardship,” wrote Daniel Pulteney, of public consternation at some new archer savagery.
To be great, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, is to be misunderstood. In Law’s case, no one comprehended that his apparent indifference to public criticism over transportations was not a signal of inhumanity but rather that he was preoccupied with far more pressing concerns. Weeks after his promotion to the position of controller general he faced the most challenging dilemma of his career. Unfettered speculation fever still spiraled. His enemies—the financiers, tax inspectors, and councillors of the Parlement whose livelihoods he had damaged—had regrouped. The very survival of the system he had created was endangered by the combined perils of still-rising share prices and burgeoning conspiracies. In such a climate, Law was understandably slow to respond to public outrage. Eventually, however, the message seems to have filtered through, and the deportations were halted in May 1720.
By then, though, Paris and the world at large had awakened to the perils of paper and to the struggle that confronted him. To save the bank, the Mississippi Company, and the fortunes of thousands of investors, Law unleashed a cataclysmic financial storm.
13
DESCENT
As long as the credit of this bank subsisted, it appeared to the French to be perfectly solid. The bubble no sooner burst, than the whole nation was thrown into astonishment and consternation. Nobody could conceive from whence the credit had sprung; what had created such mountains of wealth in so short a time; and by what witchcraft and fascination it had been made to disappear in an instant, in the short period of one day.
Sir James Steuart, An Inquiry into the
Principles of Political Oeconomy, Book IV (1770)
ON DECEMBER 30, 1719, IMPECCABLY CLAD AND BEWIGGED as always, Law entered the cabinet of the Mississippi Company and addressed the annual general meeting. The sense of expectation was almost palpable. Within the past month share prices had dropped from a high of over 10,000 livres to 7,500, only to recover eleven days later and reach 9,400. Even among this informed circle of codirectors few fully understood why. Was the company the thriving enterprise that the world at large believed it to be? If so, why had the price fallen? If not, how long could recovery be sustained? Law appeared oblivious to the anxieties. With his customary charm and self-assurance, he reassured them that the company was flourishing.