discovering a remedy.

At a meeting of the Council of Finance, and the general council of
the Regency, documents were laid upon the table, from which it
appeared that the amount of notes in circulation was 2700 millions.
The Regent was called upon to explain how it happened that there was a
discrepancy between the dates at which these issues were made, and
those of the edicts by which they were authorised. He might have
safely taken the whole blame upon himself, but he preferred that an
absent man should bear a share of it, and he therefore stated that
Law, upon his own authority, had issued 1200 millions of notes at
different times, and that he (the Regent) seeing that the thing had
been irrevocably done, had screened Law, by antedating the decrees of
the council, which authorised the augmentation. It would have been
more to his credit if he had told the whole truth while he was about
it, and acknowledged that it was mainly through his extravagance and
impatience that Law had been induced to overstep the bounds of safe
speculation. It was also ascertained that the national debt, on the
1st of January, 1721, amounted to upwards of $100 millions of livres,
or more than 124,000,000 pounds sterling, the interest upon which was
3,196,000 pounds. A commission, or visa, was forthwith appointed to
examine into all the securities of the state creditors, who were to be
divided into five classes, the first four comprising those who had
purchased their securities with real effects, and the latter
comprising those who could give no proofs that the transactions they
had entered into were real and bona fide. The securities of the latter
were ordered to be destroyed, while those of the first four classes
were subjected to a most rigid and jealous scrutiny. The result of the
labours of the visa was a report, in which they counselled the
reduction of the interest upon these securities to fifty-six millions