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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It is, accordingly, a somewhat striking circumstance that, with the exception of the short account of Law’s career by John Philip Wood issued so long ago as 1824, no adequate biography of the great financier has yet appeared in this country. While essays, and critical articles have, no doubt, appeared in abundance in numerous publications, and while his phenomenal career has even been pressed into the service of fictional literature, it has only been possible to obtain a comprehensive impression of the man and his work by reference to the numerous treatises dealing with his system published in France during the 18th century, to the voluminous memoirs of the time, and last but not least to the state and official documents in which his various schemes are considered. In preparing the following pages, therefore, it has been necessary to deal with a considerable mass of unsifted material, no small portion of which seems to have been neglected by previous writers, although valuable and requisite for forming a just and impartial estimate.