That the public should thus have allowed their excitement of feelings to destroy their judgment so far as to ignore the primary elements of caution and of foresight can hardly be attributed to Law. No evidence can be brought of any intention on his part to utilize his financial genius for the purpose of blinding the nation to its own interests, and turning it merely to his own exclusive advantage. The effect of his schemes was entirely beyond his control. So far as the reception they would receive from the French nation was concerned, his own anticipations were only too clearly exceeded. He undoubtedly perceived the dangerous courses upon which the public had entered, but it would have been imprudent on his part to have endeavoured by any arbitrary act to check it. He firmly believed in the adequacy of his system to accomplish the objects which he stated he had in view. He may have been, and was, somewhat over-sanguine, but that was merely a fault of temperament, not a consequence of sinister motive. He may have been extravagant in praise of the possibilities of his schemes, but that was due to intensity of confidence in their efficacy, not to any deliberate intention to deceive. The total capital of the company was now 300,000,000 livres, and to pay the promised dividend of 200 livres per share would require profits of at least 120,000,000 livres. Those profits were drawn principally from the interest payable by the State upon the advances made by the Company for the purposes of liquidating the national debt, from the coinage, from the tobacco monopoly, from the great farms, from the collection of general taxes, and from their general commerce. Amongst these the only leakage which could occur would be in the latter, and Law’s estimate of the profits derivable from it were placed at one-third of the whole. Such an estimate, however, may have been so wide of the mark that the expenditure incurred in the administration of the Company’s commercial transactions might possibly have been so great as to absorb the whole of the surpluses accruing from the other departments. Time, however, could alone supply the test of this, but the downfall of the system anticipated the opportunity. Other contingencies arose, foreign to the business of the Company, which struck at its stability and brought its career to an unexpected end.