famous imposter 16

famous imposter 16

The Peace of Vervins (1598) which left both France and Spain free

to look after their domestic concerns, was immediately followed by

the Edict of Nantes (1599) which gave religious liberty to France,

and such a new freedom is always followed by national expansion.

By this time Spain--the explorer or conqueror--and Holland--the

patient organiser--held Eastern commerce in their hands. England

had been gradually making a commerce of her own in the Indies, and

all that was required was an official acknowledgment, so that the

thunder of her guns should, when required, follow the creaking of her

cordage. From the story of this great enterprise, through its first

twenty-five years, could be drawn the lesson of such schemes as Law

was now formulating. Though it had succeeded, in spite of Dutch and

Portuguese opposition, in establishing “factories” when the historic

massacre by the Dutch at Amboyna in the Molucca Islands, took place

in 1725, the Eastern Company seemed near its dissolution. It was not

till the establishment of the Hooghly factory in 1742 that things

began to look up. After that, fortune favoured the Company more

than she had appeared likely to do at the start. The marriage of

Charles II to Catherine of Braganza in 1661 brought progress in its

train. Catherine’s dower, which included Bombay and so put a part of

Portugal’s later possessions in British keeping, greatly stimulated the

East India Company which thenceforth was able to weather the storms

that threatened or assailed. The privilege of making war on its own

account, conceded by Charles II, gave the Company a national importance

which was destined to consolidate its interests with those of England

itself. So strong did it become that before the end of the eighteenth

century it was able to resist the attack on its charter made by a

powerful and progressive rival, the “New Company.” The rivals, after a

few years of _pourparlers_ and tentative efforts, were united in 1708;

and thenceforth the amalgamation, under the title “The United Company

of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies,” was practically

unassailable on its own account. It was additionally safe in that it

had the protection of the great Whig Party under Godolphin. The capital

of the Company, now enlarged to £3,200,000, was lent to the Government

at five per cent. interest and was finally merged in the National

Funds. The history of the Company, after 1717 does not belong here, as

it is only considered as showing that John Law had the experience of an

earlier Company similar to his own to guide him in its management if he

had chosen to avail himself of it.

 

The Bank of England was, strangely enough, the project of a Scotchman,

William Paterson. The plan was submitted to Government in 1691 but

was not carried into existence for three years. It was purely a

business concern, brought into effective existence through the needs

of commerce, the opportunity afforded being the need of the State

and the concern of the statesman. It had a capital at first of over

£1,200,000, which was loaned to the nation on the security of the taxes

when the Charter was signed, there being certain safeguards against

the possibility of political misuse. The Controlling Board was to have

twenty-five members who were to be elected annually by the stockholders

with a substantial qualification. There were at this time in England

private banks; but this was an effort to formulate the banking

rights, duties, and powers of capital under the ægis of the State

itself. But even so sound a venture, enormously popular from the very

first and with the whole might of the nation behind it, had its own

difficulties to encounter. Its instantaneous success was an incentive

to other adventurers; and the co-operation with government which it

made manifest created jealousy with private persons and commercial

concerns. Within two years its very existence was threatened, first by

the individual hostility of those in the bullion trade, who already

acted as bankers, and then by a rival concern incorporated under strong

political support. This was the National Land Bank whose purpose was

to use the security of real estate as a guarantee for the paper money

which it issued for convenient usage. Strong as the Bank of England

was by its nature, its popularity, and its support, it was in actual

danger until the rival which had never “caught on”--to use an apposite

Americanism--actually and almost instantaneously collapsed.

 

The safety thus temporarily obtained was purchased at the cost to the

Government of a further loan of two million sterling--with the value to

the contra of an alliance thus begun with the Whig ministry.

 

A further danger came from the mad and maddening South Sea Scheme five

years later; but from which it was happily saved solely through the

greater cupidity and daring of the newer company.

 

The Darien Company, which followed hard on the heels of The African

Company, was formed in 1695, by Paterson; on the base of An Act of the

Scottish Parliament for the purpose of making an opening for Scottish

capital after the manner of the East India Company by which English

enterprise had already so largely benefited. Its career was of such

short duration and its failure so complete that there was little

difficulty in understanding the causes of its collapse. It might

serve for a _pendant_ of Lamb’s criticism of the meat that was “ill

fed and ill killed, ill kept and ill cooked.” The Company was started

to utilise, in addition to exploiting new lands, the waste of time,

energy and capital, between West and East; and yet it was not till the

first trading fleet was sailing that its objective was made known to

the adventurers. Its ideas of trading were those of a burlesque, and

its materials of barter with tropical savages on the criminal side of

the ludicrous--bibles, heavy woollen stuffs and periwigs! Naturally

a couple of years finished its working existence and “The rest is

silence.” And yet at the inception of the scheme two great nations vied

with one another for its control.

 

There are those who may say that John Law was not an impostor, but

a great financier who made a mistake. Financiers must not make

mistakes--or else they must be classed amongst the impostors; for they

deal with the goods and prospects of others as well as their own.

Law was simply a gambler on a great scale. He led a nation, through

its units, to believe that the following of his ideas would lead to

success. Financial schemes without good ideas and practical working to

carry them out are deceptive and destructive. The Mississippi Scheme

is a case in point. If the original intention had been carried out

in its entirety--which involved vast pioneering and executive action

of present and future generations, and an almost absolute foregoing

of immediate benefits--the result would have been of immense service

to the successors in title of the original ventures. The assessable

value of the real estate conveyed under the Mississippi Scheme to-day

equals more than a third of the present gigantic National Debt of

France, swollen though the latter is by the Napoleonic wars, the war

with Austria, the cost and indemnity of the war with Germany, and, in

addition, by the long wars with England and Russia.

 

If human beings had been angels, content with the prospect of gains in

the distant future, Law’s schemes might have succeeded. As it was, he,

working for his own purposes with an imperfect humanity, can only be

judged by results.

 

 

 

 

V. WITCHCRAFT AND CLAIRVOYANCE

 

A. THE PERIOD

 

 

For convenience, the masculine offender is in demonology classed under

the female designation. According to Michelet and other authorities

there were ten thousand alleged witches for each alleged wizard! and

anyhow there is little etiquette as to the precedence of ladies in

criminal matters.

 

The first English Statute dealing directly with witches appears to be

the thirty-third of Henry VIII (1541) which brought into the list of

felonies persons “devising or practising conjurations, witchcraftes,

sorcerie or inchantments or the digging up of corpses,” and depriving

such of the benefit of clergy. It was however repealed by I Edward VI

Cap. 12, and again by I Mary (in its first section.). Queen Elizabeth,

however, passed another Act (5 Elizabeth Cap. 16) practically repeating

that of her father, which had been in abeyance for more than thirty

years. The Statute of Elizabeth is exceedingly interesting in that it

states the condition of the law at that time. The opening words leave

no misunderstanding:

 

“Whereas at this day there is no ordinary nor condigne punishment

provided against the wicked offences of conjurations or

invocations of evil spirits, or of sorceries, inchantments,

charmes or witchcraftes, which be practised to the obstruction

of the persons and goods of the Queene’s subjects, or for other

lewd purposes. Be it enacted that if any person or persons

after the first day of June next coming, shall use practice, or

exercise any invocations, or conjurations, of evill or wicked

spirits, to or for any intent or purpose, or else if any person

or persons after the said first day of June shall use, practice

or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charme or sorcerie,

whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroied, that

then as well every such offendour or offendours in invocations,

or conjurations, as is aforesayde, their aydours and counsellors,

as also everie such offendour or offendours in that Witchcrafte,

enchantment, charme or sorcerie whereby the death of any person

doth ensue, their ayders and counsellors, being of eyther of

the sayde offences lawfully convicted and attainted, shall

suffer paines of death, as a felon or felons, and shall lose the

privilege and benefit of Clergy and sanctuary,” &c.

 

In this act lesser penalties are imposed for using any form of

witchcraft or sorcery, for inducing to any persons harm, or to “provoke

any person to unlawfull love or to hurt or destroy any person in his

or her bodye, member or goods,” or for the discovery or recovery of

treasure. From that time down to the first quarter of the eighteenth

century, when the law practically died out, witchcraft had its place in

the category of legal offences. The law was finally repealed by an Act

in the tenth year of George II. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

were the time of witch-fever, and in that period, especially in its

earlier days when the belief had become epidemic, it was ruthless and

destructive. It is said that in Genoa five hundred persons were burned

within three months in the year 1515, and a thousand in the diocese of

Como in a year. Round numbers in such matters are to be distrusted,

as we find they seldom bear investigation; but there is little doubt

that in France and Germany vast numbers suffered and perished. Even in

more prosaic and less emotional England there were many thousands of

judicial murders in this wise. It is asserted that within two centuries

they totalled thirty thousand.

 

It is startling to find such a weird and impossible credulity actually

rooted in the Statute book of one’s own country, and that there are

records of judges charging juries to convict. Sir Matthew Hale, a great

lawyer, a judge of the Common Pleas in 1654, and Lord Chief Justice in

1671, was a firm believer in witchcraft. He was a grave and pious man,

and all his life was an ardent student of theology as well as of law.

And yet in 1664 he sentenced women to be burned as witches. In 1716 a

mother and daughter--the latter only nine years of age--were hanged in

Huntingdon. In Scotland the last case of a woman being condemned as a

witch occurred at Dornoch in 1722.

 

It is no easy task in these days, which are rationalistic, iconoclastic

and enquiring, to understand how the commonalty not only believed

in witchcraft but acted on that belief. Probably the most tolerant

view we can take, is that both reason and enquiry are essential

and rudimentary principles of human nature. Every person of normal

faculties likes to know and understand the reasons of things;

and inquisitiveness is not posterior to the period of maternal

alimentation. If we seek for a cause we are bound to find one--even

if it be wrong. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_ has a wide if not always

a generous meaning; and when fear is founded on, if not inspired by

ignorance, that unthinking ferocity which is one of our birthrights

from Adam is apt to carry us further than we ever meant to go. In an

age more clear-seeing than our own and less selfish we shall not think

so poorly of primitive emotions as we are at present apt to. On the

contrary we shall begin to understand that in times when primitivity

holds sway, we are most in touch with the loftiest things we are

capable of understanding, and our judgment, being complex, is most

exact. Indeed in this branch of the subject persons used to call to aid

a special exercise of our natural forces--the æsthetic. When witchcraft

was a belief, the common idea was that that noxious power was almost

entirely held by the old and ugly. The young, fresh, and beautiful,

were seldom accepted as witches save by the novelty-loving few or

those of sensual nature. This was perhaps fortunate--if the keeping

down of the population in this wise was necessary; it is easier as

well as safer to murder the uncomely than those of greater charm. In

any case there was no compunction about obliterating the former class.