=I.= LAW AND THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE.—The literature of the Mississippi Scheme is extensive, and includes the relations of Law’s system to general monetary science. The Mississippi excitement instigated the South Sea Scheme in England. Holland, also, was largely affected, and gave, as well as England and France, considerable additions to the contemporary mass of brochures which grew out of these financial revolutions. Law’s own pleas and expositions, as issued in pamphlets, are the central sources of his own views or pretensions, and are included in the _Œuvres de J. Law_, published at Paris in 1790. These writings are again found in Daire’s _Économistes financiers;_ where will also be met the _Essai politique sur le commerce_ of Melon, Law’s secretary,—a production which Levasseur styles an allegorical history of the system,—and the _Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce_ of Dutot, another of Law’s partisans, who was one of the cashiers of the Company of the Indies, and undertook to correct what he thought misconceptions in Melon; and he was in turn criticised by an opponent of Law, Paris Duverney, in a little book printed at the Hague in 1740, as _Examen du livre intitulé, etc._ Law’s proposal for his Mississippi Company is also included in a Dutch collection of similar propositions, printed at the Hague in 1721 as _Verzameling van alle de projecten en conditien van de compagnien van assuratie_, etc. There are various _Lettres patentes_, _Édits_, _Arrests_, _Ordonnances_, etc., issued separately by the French Government, some of which are included in a volume published at Amsterdam in 1720,—_Recueil d’arrests et autres pièces pour l’établissement de la compagnie d’occident_. Others will be found, by title at least, in the _Recueil général des anciennes lois Françoises_ (Paris, 1830), vol. xxi., with the preambles given at length of some of the more important. Neither of these collections is complete, nor does that of Duhautchamp take their place; but all three, doubtless, contain the chief of such documents. A few of the contemporary publications may be noted:— _Some Considerations on the Consequences of the French settling Colonies on the Mississippi, from a Gentleman_ [Beresford] _of America to his Friend in London_, London, 1720 (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 275). _Impartial Inquiry into the Right of the French King to the Territory west of the Mississippi_ (London, n. d.). _The Chimera; or, the French way of paying National Debts laid open_ (London, 1720). _Full and Impartial Account of the Company of the Mississippi ... projected and settled by Mr. Law_. To which is added a _Description of the Country of the Mississippi and a Relation of the Discovery of it, in Two Letters from a Gentleman to his Friend_ (London, 1720). In French and English (cf. Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 276). This is an incentive to the speculation.