John Law's Contention that to Create Money Is to Create Wealth Was Vigorously Rejected by All His Contemporaries

The failure of John Law's unfortunate attempt to establish a bank of issue in France dominated the ideas of the eighteenth century about credit. His contention that to create money is to create wealth was vigorously rejected by all his contemporaries. The efforts made in the course of the century by so many writers, including Smith, Hume and Turgot, to reduce the role of money in the national economy to nothing or to insignificance, were directed against Law rather than against mercantilist ideas about money, which had already worn thin. Had not Law announced that an increase in the quantity of money was the only way of stimulating the national economy?

--Charles Rist, History of Monetary and Credit Theory from John Law to the Present Day, trans. Jane Degras (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), 43.