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measures Law, it may well be believed, had nothing to do. He left France secretly in December 1720, resumed his wandering life, and died at Venice, poor and forgotten, 21st March 1729.
Of Law's writings the most important for the comprehension of
the "system" is his Money and Trade Considered. In this work
he says that national power and wealth consist in numbers of
people, and magazines of home and foreign goods. These depend
on trade, and that on money, of which a greater quantity employs
more people; but credit, if the credit have a circulation, has all the
beneficial effects of money. To create and increase instruments of
credit is the function of a bank. Let such be created then, and let
its notes be only given in return for land sold or pledged. Such a
currency would supply the nation with abundance of money ; and
it would have many advantages, which Law points out in detail,
over silver. The bank or commission was to be a Government institu
tion, and its profits were to be spent in encouraging the export and
manufacture of the nation. A very evident error lies at the root
of the system. Money is not the result but the cause of wealth, he
thought. To increase it then must be beneficial, and the best way is
by a properly secured paper currency. This is the motive force ; but
it is to be applied in a particular way. Law had a profound belief
in the omnipotence of Government. He saw the evils of minor
monopolies, and of private farming of taxes. He proposed to centre
foreign trade and internal finance in one huge monopoly managed
by the state for the people, and carrying on business through a
plentiful supply of paper money. He did not see that trade and
commerce are best left to private enterprise, and that such a scheme
would simply result in the profits of speculators and favourites.
The system indeed was never so far developed as to exhibit its in
herent faults. We have already seen how the madness of specu
lators ruined the plan when only its foundations were laid. One
part indeed might have been saved. The bank was not necessarily
bound to the company, and had its note issue been retrenched it
might have become a permanent institution. As M. Thiers points
out, the edict of 5th March 1720, which made the shares convertible
into notes, ruined the bank without saving the company. The
shares had risen to an unnatural height, and they should have been
allowed to fall to their natural level. Perhaps Law felt this to be
impossible. He had friends at court whose interests were involved
in the shares, and he had enemies eager for his overthrow. It was
necessary to succeed completely or not at all ; so Law risked and
lost everything. Notwithstanding the faults of the system, it
cannot be denied that its author was a financial genius of the
first order. He had the errors of his time ; but his writings show
that he first propounded many truths as to the nature of currency
and banking then unknown to his contemporaries. The marvellous
skill which he displayed in adapting the theory of the system to the
actual condition of things in France, and in carrying out the vari
ous financial transactions rendered necessary by its development, is
absolutely without parallel. His profound self-confidence and belief
in the truth of his own theories were the reasons alike of his success
and his ruin. He never hesitated to employ the whole force of a
despotic Government for the definite ends which he saw before him.
He was not self-seeking. He left France poorer than he entered it,
nor was he perceptibly changed by his sudden transitions of for
tune. Montesquieu visited him at Venice after his fall, and has
left a description of him not without a certain touch of pathos.
Law, he tells us, was still the same in character, perpetually plan
ning and scheming, and, though in poverty, revolving vast projects
to restore himself to power, and France to commercial prosperity.
The best account of the Mississippi scheme is that of Thiers, "Law et son système des Finances," first published in the Encyclopedie progressive, Paris, 1826; there is an American translation, New York, 1859. See also Heymann, Law und sein System, Munich, 1853; E. Levasseur, Recherches historiques sur le système de Law, Paris, 1854; and Jobez, Une préface au Socialisme, ou le système de Law et la chasse aux capitalistes, Paris, 1848. Full biographical details are given in Wood's Life of Law, Edinburgh, 1824. All Law's later writings are to be found in Daire, Collection des principaux Economistes, vol. i., Paris, 1843. (F. WA.)
LAW, WILLIAM (1686-1761). The events of the life of
this remarkable man may be very briefly stated. He was
born in 1686 at King's Cliffe; in 1705 he entered as a
sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; in 1711 he was
elected fellow of his college and received holy orders, and in
1712 he took his M.A. degree. He resided at Cambridge,
taking pupils and occasional duty until the accession of
George I., when his conscience forbade him to take the oaths
of allegiance to the new Government and of abjuration of the
Stuarts; his staunch Jacobitism had already been betrayed
in a tripos speech which brought him into trouble; and
he was now deprived of his fellowship, and became a non-
juror. For the nest few years he is said to have been a
curate in London, but the point is doubtful. In 1727 we
find him domiciled at Putney as tutor to Edward Gibbon,
father of the historian, and "the much honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family" (Gibbon, The Memoirs of my Life and Writings). In the same year he accompanied bis pupil to Cambridge, and resided with him as governor, in term time, for the next four years. His pupil then went abroad, but Law was left at Putney, where he remained in Mr Gibbon's house for more than ten years, acting as a religious guide not only to the family but to a number of pious men who used to make pilgrimages to consult the Putney sage. The most eminent of these were the two brothers John and Charles Wesley, Dr Byrom the poet, Dr Cheyne the famous physician, and Mr Archibald Hutcheson, M.P. for Hastings. In 1737 Mr Gibbon the elder died, and the household was, a short time afterwards, dispersed. Law therefore was parted from his friends, leaving behind him, the historian tells us, "in our family the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed, and practised all that he enjoined." In 1740 Law retired to his native village, where he had inherited from his father a house and a small property. There he was presently joined by two ladies, Mrs Hutche son, the rich widow of his old friend, who recommended her on his death-bed to place herself under Law's spiritual guidance, and Miss Hester Gibbon, sister to his late pupil. This curious trio lived for twenty-one years a life wholly given to devotion and charity, until the death of Law in 1761.
Such was the singularly uneventful life of this good man; but during the whole period from the time when he became a non-juror almost to the day of his death he was busily engaged in literary work which places him in the very first rank of 18th century divines. As a writer, it will be convenient to consider him under three heads.
1. As a singularly able controversialist. The first of his controversial works was Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717), which were considered both by friend and foe as one of the most powerful contributions to the Bangorian controversy on the High Church side. Dean (afterwards Bishop) Sherlock declared that "Mr Law was a writer so considerable that he knew but one good reason why his lordship did not answer him." Law's next controversial work was Remarks on Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1723), in which he vindicates morality on the highest grounds; for pure style, caustic wit, and lucid argument this is a perfect gem; it was enthusiastically praised by John Sterling, and has been republished by F. D. Maurice. Law's Case of Reason (1732), in answer to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation is to a great extent an anticipation of Bishop Butler's famous argument in the Analogy. In this work Law shows himself at least the equal of the ablest champion of Deism. His Letters to a Lady inclined to enter the Church of Rome are excellent specimens of the attitude which a High-Churchman maintains against Romanism.
2. As a very effective writer on practical divinity. The Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), together with its predecessor, A Treatise of Christian Perfection (1726), deeply influenced the chief actors in the great Evangelical revival. The Wesleys, Whitefield, Venn, Scott, and Adam all express their deep obligation to the author. The Serious Call affected others quite as deeply. Dr Johnson, Gibbon, Lord Lyttelton, and Bishop Horne all speak enthusiastically of its merits; and it has been, until lately, perhaps the only work by which its author was popularly known. In a tract entitled The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments, Law, unlike himself, was tempted by the undoubted corruptions of the stage of the period to use language which transcends the bounds of reason.
3. As one of the few English mystics. Though the least popular, by far the most interesting, original, and suggestive of all Law's works are those which he wrote in his later years, after he had become an enthusiastic admirer (not a disciple) of Jacob Boehme, the Teutonic theosopher. From his earliest years he had been deeply impressed with the piety, beauty, and thoughtfulness of the writings of the Christian mystics, but it was not till after his accidental meeting with the works of Boehme, about 1734, that pronounced mysticism appears in his works. It would far transcend the limits of this article to describe, however briefly, the purport of Law's mystic writings. All are very beautiful; some are wild and fanciful; but not one of them is inconsistent with his position as a churchman, and even a very high churchman of the spiritual type. The titles of the works written by Law in his mystic stage are A
