* The English banker and economist John Law ostensibly believed that the state could increase public wealth simply by inconvertible note issue. In 1716 he founded a bank in Paris, which two years later was made into a state bank based on this principle. Law’s operations gave rise to a previously unheard-of degree of speculation, ending in 1720 with the inevitable collapse of his bank.

† John Francis, History of the Bank of England, Its Times and Traditions, Vol. 1, London [1848], pp. 39–40.