A decree authorizing the issue of an unlimited quantity of paper
bills, the predecessors of the assignats of the mother country, was
strongly advocated by Bigot, who supported his views with a degree
of financial sophistry which showed that he had effectively mastered
the science of delusion and fraud of which Law had been the great
teacher in France, and the Mississippi scheme, the prototype of the
Grand Company, the great exemplar.
La Corne St. Luc opposed the measure forcibly. "He wanted no paper
lies," he said, "to cheat the husbandman of his corn and the laborer
of his hire. If the gold and silver had all to be sent to France to
pamper the luxuries of a swarm of idlers at the Court, they could
buy and sell as they had done in the early days of the Colony, with
beaver skins for livres, and muskrat skins for sous. These paper
bills," continued he, "had been tried on a small scale by the
Intendant Hoquart, and on a small scale had robbed and impoverished
the Colony. If this new Mississippi scheme propounded by new
Laws,"--and here La Corne glanced boldly at the Intendant,--"is to
be enforced on the scale proposed, there will not be left in the
Colony one piece of silver to rub against another.
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