So far, so good. Next, Law planned, and, with the ever ready consent of the Regent, effected, an enlargement of the business of his bank, based on that delusion I spoke of about America. This enlargement was the formation of the Mississippi Company, and this was the contrivance which swelled into so tremendous a humbug. The company was closely connected with the banks, and received (to begin with) the monopoly of all trade to the Mississippi River, and all the country west of it. It was expected to obtain vast quantities of gold and silver from that region, and thus to make immense dividends on its stock. At home, it was to have the sole charge of collecting all the taxes and coining all the money. Stock was issued to the amount of one hundred thousand shares, at $200 (five hundred livres) each. And Law's help to the Government funds was continued by permitting this stock to be paid for in those funds, at their par value, though worth in market only about a third of it. Subscriptions came in rapidly--for the French community was far more ignorant about commercial affairs, finances, and the real resources of distant regions, than we can easily conceive of now-a-days; and not only the Regent, but every man, woman, and child in France, except a very few tough and hard-headed old skeptics, believed every word Law said, and would have believed him if he had told stories a hundred times as incredible. Well, pretty soon the Regent gave the associates--the bank and the company--two other monopolies: that of tobacco, always monstrously profitable, and that of refining gold and silver. Pretty soon, again, he created the bank a state institution, by the magnificent name of The Royal Bank of France. Having done this, the Regent could control the bank in spite of Law (or order either); for, in those days, the kings of France were almost perfectly despotic, and the Regent was acting king. I have mentioned the Regent's terrible delusion about paper-money. No sooner had he the bank in his power, than he added to the reasonable and useful total of $12,000,000 of notes already out, a monstrous issue of $200,000,000 worth in one vast batch, with the firm conviction that he was thus adding so much to the par currency of France. The Parliament of France, a body mostly of lawyers, originating in the Middle Ages, a steady, conservative, wise, and brave assembly, was always hostile to Law and his schemes. When this great expansion of paper-currency began, the Parliament made a resolute fight against it, petitioning, ordaining, threatening to hang Law, and frightening him well, too; for the thorough enmity of an assembly of old lawyers may well frighten anybody. At last, the Regent, by the use of the despotic power of which the Kings of France had so much, reduced these old fellows to silence by sticking a few of them in jail.