The extravagant expenditure of the late monarch had plunged the kingdom into apparently inextricable financial confusion. The debt was 3000 million livres, the estimated annual expenditure, exclusive of interest payments, 148 million livres, and the income about the same. The advisability of declaring a national bankruptcy was seriously discussed, and though this plan was rejected, measures hardly less violent were carried. By a _visa_, or examination of the state liabilities by a committee with full powers of quashing claims, the debt was reduced nearly a half, the coin in circulation was ordered to be called in and reissued at the rate of 120 for 100--a measure by which foreign coiners profited greatly, and a chamber of justice was established to punish speculators, to whom the difficulties of the state were ascribed. These measures had so little success that the _billets d'état_ which were issued as part security for the new debt at once sank 75% below their nominal value. At this crisis Law unfolded a vast scheme to the perplexed regent. A royal bank was to manage the trade and currency of the kingdom, to collect the taxes, and to free the country from debt. The council of finance, then under the duc de Noailles, opposed the plan, but the regent allowed Law to take some tentative steps. By an edict of 2nd May 1716, a private institution called _La Banque générale_, and managed by Law, was founded. The capital was 6 million livres, divided into 1200 shares of 5000 livres, payable in four instalments, one-fourth in cash, three-fourths in _billets d'état_. It was to perform the ordinary functions of a bank, and had power to issue notes payable at sight in the weight and value of the money mentioned at day of issue. The bank was a great and immediate success. By providing for the absorption of part of the state paper it raised the credit of the government. The notes were a most desirable medium of exchange, for they had the element of fixity of value, which, owing to the arbitrary mint decrees of the government, was wanting in the coin of the realm. They proved the most convenient instruments of remittance between the capital and the provinces, and they thus developed the industries of the latter. The rate of interest, previously enormous and uncertain, fell first to 6 and then to 4%; and when another decree (10th April 1717) ordered collectors of taxes to receive notes as payments, and to change them for coin at request, the bank so rose in favour that it soon had a note-issue of 60 million livres. Law now gained the full confidence of the regent, and was allowed to proceed with the development of the "system."