Memoir of the life of John Law of Lauriston

22 LIFE OF JOHN LAW
enormous weight of debt upon the nation,
which groaned under the intolerable load of
taxes imposed for payment of the interest.
All industry was thus checked; trade in a
manner annihilated; manufactures, commerce,
and navigation had almost ceased; the mer-
chant and the trader were reduced to beggary,
and the artificer was compelled, for want of
employment, to leave the kingdom. In short,
such was the state of affairs, that it had been
debated in council, and proposed to the Re-
gent, to expunge at once the debts of the state
by a national bankruptcy. This proposal he
nobly rejected, preferring to it the more equit-
able method of establishing a commission or
Visa, to inquire into the claims of the state
creditors. By this commission the national
debt was at last put into a kind of order, and
the amount reduced to somewhat more than
2000 millions of livres, which, at 28 livres to the
marc of standard silver, (two pounds sterling,)
the then denomination of the specie in France,
made above 142 millions sterling. Of this
sum, 1750 millions of livres were established
upon particular funds, at the rate of four per
cent; and for the remaining 250 millions, the
creditors obtained billets d'etat, as they were