John Law: From a Newgate Death Sentence to Paper Money and Ruin in France

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John Law was born in Fife, Scotland, in 1671 into a family of goldsmiths and bankers whose fortune bought Lauriston Castle. He learned the banking trade by age 14, but after his father died in 1688 he left for London and a life of gambling. In April 1694 he killed Edward "Beau" Wilson in a duel in Bloomsbury Square, reportedly over Elizabeth Villiers. Judge Salathiel Lovell, known as the Hanging Judge, sentenced him to death; the charge was reduced to manslaughter, Wilson's brother revived it with an appeal of murder, and Law escaped Newgate Prison, most likely through bribed guards, and fled to Amsterdam. In Scotland around 1705 he published Money and Trade Considered, proposing a national bank issuing paper notes backed by land. The Scottish Parliament rejected it.

France, deep in debt after the death of Louis XIV, gave him his chance. The regent, the Duke of Orléans, let him open a private bank in Paris in 1716, nationalized as the Banque Royale in 1718. His Mississippi Company, launched in 1717, founded New Orleans in 1718 and absorbed the French East India, China and Africa companies. Law converted to Catholicism, became Comptroller General of Finances in 1720 and grew into the richest man in Europe, while the word millionaire was coined in Paris to describe his investors. Printing money to support the share price brought inflation, a failed devaluation and a bank run in which people were trampled. He was dismissed, fled to Brussels and died poor in Venice in 1729.

• Under his system French industrial output rose 60 percent in two years and exporting ships grew from 16 to more than 300.
• Pamphlets sold Louisiana as a paradise where natives traded gold and silver for glass beads.
• In March 1720 he froze the company's share price at 9,000 livres, then announced a devaluation he reversed days later.
• The Banque Royale closed for 10 days during the run and then limited coin withdrawals.
• He was later pardoned by Britain for the old murder charge and was buried in the church of San Moisè in Venice.