The plan, therefore, concerted between the Regent and the company seems to have been, to raise the actions to this great value, in order to suspend a greater quantity of notes in circulation. This was to be accomplished, 1. by the Regent’s purchasing the actions himself from the company; 2. by borrowing back the notes he had paid for them, in order to fill up the loan which the company had agreed to make; 3. to pay off all the public creditors with those notes so borrowed back; and 4. when the nation was once filled with bank paper, to sell the actions he had purchased from the company, to withdraw his own paper, and then destroy it. By this operation the whole debts of France were to be turned into actions; and the company was to become the public debtor, instead of the King, who would have no more to pay but 48 millions of interest to the company. By this operation also, the Regent was to withdraw all the bank notes which he had issued for no other value but for the payment of debts; which notes were demandable at the bank; and for the future, he was to issue no more (I suppose) but for value preserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. XXX. _Inquiry into the Motives of the Duke of Orleans in concerting the Plan of the Missisippi._ Now if we examine the motives of the Regent, with regard to this plan, and suppose that he foresaw all that was to happen in consequence of it; and if we also suppose that he really believed that the company never could be in a situation to make good the dividend of 200 livres, which they had promised upon their actions; in a word, if we put the worst interpretation upon all his actions, we must conclude that the whole was a most consummate piece of knavery. But as this does not appear evidently, either by the succeeding operations, or ultimate consequences of this scheme, I am loth to ascribe, to that great man, a sentiment so opposite to that which animated him, on his entrance upon the regency, when he nobly rejected the plan proposed to him for expunging the debts altogether. I may therefore suppose, that he might believe that the company to whom he had given the mint, the tobacco, the farms, and the trade of France, and to whom he soon after gave the general receipt of all the revenue, might by these means be enabled to make good their engagements to the public. I say, this _may be supposed_; in which case justice was to be done to every one; and the King’s debts were to be reduced to 48 millions a year, instead of 80 millions. That this is a supposeable case, I gather from Dutot, who gives us an enumeration of the revenue of the company, Vol. I. p. 162. as follows: Revenue of the Company of the Indies.