Towards the end of August 1719, Thomas Pitt, Lord Londonderry, dined in Paris with John Law, who was shortly to be appointed Contrôlleur-Général des Finances, effectively Prime Minister, to the French King Louis XV. Law was then in the process of organizing the repayment of the French national debt by his Mississippi Company, and was consumed with a sense of his own financial genius. He seems to have believed that France, under his financial direction, was destined to push Britain into the margins of finance and trade, causing investors to abandon British securities for shares in his Mississippi Company, the market for which was being inflated using credit money created by Law’s own Banque Royale.2 A contract with Lord Londonderry was drawn up and signed on 29 September 1719. Under this contract, His Lordship was to pay Law £180,000 in exchange for £100,000 of shares in the East India Company, a year thence. At the end of September 1719, East India shares cost £192 per £100 of shares. By June 1720 their price had risen to £420 at which price Law’s prospective loss on the contract was £240,000. Law made various margin payments on the contract but, in the months that followed, the Mississippi Company collapsed, and in December 1720, Law fled France. It is unlikely that he ever fully settled his contract with Lord Londonderry.3