242 SPOFFORD 



lishmen and other foreigners with profuse hospitality. We 

 read of his driving his chariot and four horses from Baltimore 

 to Washington, with his wife, in 1796. George Washington 

 and his Secretary, Tobias Lear, stayed at Law's house on fre- 

 quent visits to the Federal City. 



Law was one of the chief promoters of the canal lottery, a 

 scheme which must not be confounded with the Washington 

 lotteries of Samuel Blodget. A charter was granted by Mary- 

 land in 1795, with Daniel Carroll, Thomas Law, and others as 

 corporators, to build a canal from above Great Falls through 

 Washington City to the Eastern Branch. Into this Mr. Law 

 put much money and time. Procuring from Congress an enabl- 

 ing act authorizing the lottery, in 181 2, the Washington Canal 

 Company widely advertised the scheme as a ' National lottery,' 

 and sold many tickets in Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere. 



Mr. Law died July 31, 1834, ^g<^d seventy-five years, at his 

 mansion on Capitol Hill. The National Intelligencer styled 

 him " one of the oldest, most zealous and enlightened citizens," 

 and said that he had passed an old age clouded by disease and 

 domestic calamity (for all his children had died before him) but 

 '•indulging with delight in such hospitality as his narrowed 

 means permitted him to exercise, for his many investments 

 proved anything but lucrative." He wrote at least twelve 

 pamphlets, printed anonymously, chiefly on finance and sound 

 banking. His work, ' Thoughts on Instinctive Impulses,' 

 however, is an ethical and poetical treatise displaying a wide 

 range of speculative thought. 



DESCRIPTIONS BY EARLY TRAVELERS. 



Richard Parkinson, whose tour in America in 1798 to 1800 

 appeared in two volumes, said that Washington contained only 

 three hundred houses, and he concluded that it was too young 

 a city for a brewery, which he had thought to establish. 

 Thomas Law he found the only man of any considerable 

 monied property in the city. He met General Washington at 

 Mr. Law's, who was " quite sociable," though he adds, " the 

 General went to bed at nine o'clock, as that was his hour." 



