Читать книгу John Law of Lauriston. Financier and Statesman, Founder of the Bank of France, Originator of the Mississippi Scheme, Etc онлайн

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Law had succeeded in interesting the Court party and a considerable number of influential politicians in favour of his suggested scheme. It appealed to them less upon its merits than upon its probable effect of reducing the estates of the kingdom to dependence upon the Government. The Duke of Argyll, supported by his sons the Marquis of Lorne and Lord Archibald Campbell, and by the Marquis of Tweeddale, submitted the proposal to the Scottish Parliament. An opposition, however, led by the Lord Chancellor, proved strong enough to reject it by a large majority, and passed a resolution “that the establishing of any kind of paper credit, so as to oblige it to pass, was an improper expedient for the nation.” It is evident that the ground of the opposition, which was ostensibly the chimerical nature of the scheme, but really the fear that the Government of the country would be placed in the hands of the Court by its adoption, was not the concealed intention of Law in its formulation. The possibility of this consequence only emerged in the course of discussion, and in the knowledge of the composition of Parliament the opponents of the scheme were strongly justified in regarding the possible result as a certain probability. From Law’s point of view, however, the scheme only attempted what is successfully followed by banking institutions of the present day, with the difference that the latter have a reserve of gold against their notes, whereas the former would have had the landed property of the country.