The fullest account of the Mississippi scheme is that of Thiers, _Law et son système des finances_ (1826, American trans. 1859). See also Heymann, _Law und sein System_ (1853); Pierre Bonnassieux, _Les Grandes Compagnies de commerce_ (1892); S. Alexi, _John Law und sein System_ (1885); E. Levasseur, _Récherches historiques sur le système de Law_ (1854); and Jobez, _Une Préface au socialisme, ou le système de Law et la chasse aux capitalistes_ (1848). Full biographical details are given in Wood's _Life of Law_ (Edinburgh, 1824). All Law's later writings are to be found in Daire, _Collection des principaux économistes_, vol. i. (1843). Other works on Law are: A. W. Wiston-Glynn, _John Law of Lauriston_ (1908); P. A. Cachut, _The Financier Law, his Scheme and Times_ (1856); A. Macf. Davis, _An Historical Study of Law's System_ (Boston, 1887); A. Beljame, _La Pronunciation du nom de Jean Law le financier_ (1891). See also E. A. Benians in _Camb. Mod. Hist._ vi. 6 (1909). For minor notices see Poole's _Index to Periodicals_. There is a portrait of Law by A. S. Belle in the National Portrait Gallery, London. (F. Wa.)
[1] A work entitled _Proposals and Reasons for constituting a Council of Trade in Scotland_ was published anonymously at Edinburgh in 1701. It was republished at Glasgow in 1751 with Law's name attached; but several references in the state papers of the time mention William Paterson (1658-1719), founder of the Bank of England, as the author of the plan therein propounded. Even if Law had nothing to do with the composition of the work, he must have read it and been influenced by it. This may explain how it contains the germs of many of the developments of the "system." Certainly the suggestion of a central board, to manage great commercial undertakings, to furnish occupation for the poor, to encourage mining, fishing and manufactures, and to bring about a reduction in the rate of interest, was largely realized in the Mississippi scheme. See Bannister's Life of William Paterson (ed. 1858), and _Writings of William Paterson_ (2nd ed., 3 vols., 1859).
LAW, WILLIAM (1686-1761), English divine, was born at King's Cliffe, Northamptonshire. In 1705 he entered as a sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; in 1711 he was elected fellow of his college and was ordained. He resided at Cambridge, teaching and taking occasional duty until the accession of George I., when his conscience forbade him to take the oaths of allegiance to the new government and of abjuration of the Stuarts. His Jacobitism had already been betrayed in a tripos speech which brought him into trouble; and he was now deprived of his fellowship and became a non-juror. For the next few years he is said to have been a curate in London. By 1727 he was domiciled with Edward Gibbon (1666-1736) at Putney as tutor to his son Edward, father of the historian, who says that Law became "the much honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family." In the same year he accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and resided with him as governor, in term time, for the next four years. His pupil then went abroad, but Law was left at Putney, where he remained in Gibbon's house for more than ten years, acting as a religious guide not only to the family but to a number of earnest-minded folk who came to consult him. The most eminent of these were the two brothers John and Charles Wesley, John Byrom the poet, George Cheyne the physician and Archibald Hutcheson, M.P. for Hastings. The household was dispersed in 1737. Law was parted from his friends, and in 1740 retired to King's Cliffe, where he had inherited from his father a house and a small property. There he was presently joined by two ladies: Mrs Hutcheson, the rich widow of his old friend, who recommended her on his death-bed to place herself under Law's spiritual guidance, and Miss Hester Gibbon, sister to his late pupil. This curious trio lived for twenty-one years a life wholly given to devotion, study and charity, until the death of Law on the 9th of April 1761.