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Updated: May 24, 2025
I believe in general the farmers are the people most contented with the revolution, and indeed they have reason to be so; for at present they refuse to sell their corn unless for money, while they pay their rent in assignats; and farms being for the most part on leases, the objections of the landlord to this kind of payment are of no avail.
That minister was of opinion, that, whatever their secret nutritive virtue might be, the state could not live upon assignats alone, that some real silver was necessary, particularly for the satisfaction of those who, having iron in their hands, were not likely to distinguish themselves for patience, when they should perceive, that, whilst an increase of pay was held out to them in real money, it was again to be fraudulently drawn back by depreciated paper.
Reckoning, however, at the real value of assignats when the calculation was made, and they were then worth perhaps a fifth of their nominal value, the government was actually at the expence of ten millions sterling a year, for supplying Paris with a very scanty portion of bread!
It was easy, indeed, to foresee, that an immense circulation of paper, like any other currency, must augment the price of every thing; but the excessive discredit of the assignats, operating accessarily to their quantity, has produced a train of collateral effects of greater magnitude than even those that were originally apprehended.
The assignats have depreciated, just as I predicted, the army is in revolt, and the ministers threatened with la lanterne. 'Tis much the fashion in Paris, let me tell you. But murder, duelling, and pillage they sacked the hotel of the Duc de Castries the other day because his son wounded Charles de Lameth in a duel are every-day occurrences now.
This pamphlet was signed "A Friend of the People," and was received with great applause by the thoughtful minority in the Assembly. Du Pont de Nemours, who had stood by Necker in the debate on the first issue of assignats, arose, avowed the pamphlet to be his, and said sturdily that he had always voted against the emission of irredeemable paper and always would.
In one night, by torchlight, their extensive warehouses were sacked, and all their stores were forcibly sold in the public marketplace to the best bidder: the plundered merchants were paid the amount of the sale in assignats, in a paper currency which then bore an enormous discount, and shortly afterwards retained only the value of the paper upon which the national note was written.
They are all professors of assignats. Even those, whose natural good sense and knowledge of commerce, not obliterated by philosophy, furnish decisive arguments against this delusion conclude their arguments by proposing the emission of assignats. I suppose they must talk of assignats, as no other language would be understood.
Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party hoped to gain the bankers, merchants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the misfortunes of their country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens.
VI. Relaxation. Relaxation of the Revolutionary system after Thermidor. Repeal of the Maximum. New situation of the peasant. He begins to cultivation again. Requisition of grain by the State. The cultivator indemnifies himself at the expense of private persons. Multiplication and increasing decline of Assignats. The classes who have to bear the burden.
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