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Our embarrassment for small change is renewed: many of the communes who had issued bills of five, ten, and fifteen sols, repayable in assignats, are become bankrupts, which circumstance has thrown such a discredit on all this kind of nominal money, that the bills of one town will not pass at another.
To come here to you I have had my boots blacked and my face shaved. I possess what I have on my back. But, he added, with a gesture, 'I owe my landlady a thousand francs in assignats, and the man I buy cold victuals from refused me credit yesterday.
He said that the issue of assignats would relieve the distress of the people and he presented very neatly the new theory of paper money and its basis in the following words: "The earth is the source of value; you cannot distribute the earth in a circulating value, but this paper becomes representative of that value and it is evident that the creditors of the nation will not be injured by taking it."
The shopkeepers were surprised at the liberality of their enemies and conquerors, who were willing to dispose of these assignats for anything they would fetch a little wine, or a few ounces of tobacco; whereas, their own friends, the republicans, had insisted that they should be taken at their nominal value as money, for all goods exposed for sale.
To make assurance doubly sure, it also provided that as fast as the assignats were paid into the treasury for land they should be burned, and thus a healthful contraction be constantly maintained. Unlike the first issue, these new notes were to bear no interest. Great were the plaudits of the nation at this relief.
* the worthy father of a family daily deciding what article of furniture he will sell to make up for what is lacking in his wages that he may buy a half-pound of bread; * every sort of provision increasing in price sixty times an hour; * the smallest business dependent on the fall of assignats; * intriguers of all parties overthrowing each other only to get offices;
"These assignats, bearing interest as they do, will soon be considered better than the coin now hoarded, and will bring it out again into circulation." The king was also induced to issue a proclamation recommending that his people receive this new money without objection. All this caused great joy.
While every individual persists in establishing it as a maxim, that any thing is better than assignats, we must expect that all things will be difficult to procure, and will, of course, bear a high price. I fear, all the empyricism of the legislature cannot produce a nostrum for this want of faith. Dragoons and penal laws only "linger, and linger it out;" the disease is incurable.
No rhetoric could impress on a class the real spirit and strength of the middle ages as could one of my illuminated psalters or missals; no declamation upon the boldness of Luther could impress thinking young men as did citations from his ``Erfurt Sermon, which, by weakening his safe-conduct, put him virtually at the mercy of his enemies at the Diet of Worms; no statements as to the fatuity of Robespierre could equal citations from an original copy of his ``Report on the Moral and Religious Considerations which Ought to Govern the Republic''; all specifications of the folly of Marat paled before the ravings in the original copies of his newspaper, ``L'Ami du Peuple''; no statistics regarding the paper-money craze in France could so impress its actuality on students as did the seeing and handling of French revolutionary assignats and mandats, many of them with registration numbers clearly showing the enormous quantities of this currency then issued; no illustration, at second hand, of the methods of the French generals during the Revolutionary period could produce the impression given by a simple exhibition of the broadsides issued by the proconsuls of that period; no description of the collapse of the triumvirate and the Reign of Terror could equal a half-hour's reading from the ``Moniteur''; and all accounts of the Empire were dim compared to grandiose statements read from the original bulletins of Napoleon.
It was, at best, variable; and Italy, which was partially bankrupt when it reduced the interest due to its creditors, will, sooner or later, according to the opinion of the ablest writers, land in complete bankruptcy. The rents substituted by force, instead of real property, will then possess the value of the assignats of the first French revolution.
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