The proceeds of the sale of the stock in the Mississippi Company went not to search for the as yet undiscovered gold, but to the government for its debts. The notes that went out to pay the debt came back to buy more stock. More stock was then issued to satisfy more of the intense demand, the latter having the effect of lifting both the old and the new issues to ever more extravagant heights. All the notes in this highly literal circulation were, it was presumed, backed by coin in the Banque Royale, but the amount of the coin that so sustained the notes was soon minuscule in relation to the
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