Their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of church plunder has induced these philosophers to overlook all care of the public estate,, just as the dream of the philosopher's stone induces dupes, under the more plausible delusion of the hermetic art, to neglect all rational means of improving their fortunes. With these philosophic financiers, this universal medicine made of church mummy is to cure all the evils of the state. These gentlemen perhaps do not believe a great deal in the miracles of piety; but it cannot be questioned, that they have an undoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege. Is there a debt which presses them? — Issue assignats S'2'2 Kl II | < iluNs on 1 Hi.
— Arc compensations to be made, or a maintei decreed to those whom they have robbed of their freehold in their office, or expelled from their protessixm— Assignats. Is a fleet to be fitted out Assignats. If sixteen millions sterling of these assignats, forced on the people, leave the wants of the state as urgent as ever — issue, says one. thirty millions sterling of assignats— says ai • issue fourscore millions more of assignats. The only difference among their financial factions is on the greater or the lesser quantity of assignai be imposed on the public suflterance. They are all professors of assignats. Even those, whose natural good sense and knowledge of commerce, not ob- literated by philosophy, furnish decisive arguments against this delusion, conclude their arguments by proposing the emission oi assignats. I suppose they must talk of assignats, as no other language would be understood. All experience <>(' their inefficacy does not in the least discourage them. Are the old assignats depreciated at market? What is the remedy? Issue new assignats. — Miais si maladia, opiniatria, nun vn/f ■. quid Hit factre? assignare—postea assignare; ensuita assig- nare. The word is a trifle altered. The Latin of your present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy: their wisdom, and the variety of their resources, are the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summec and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that of the raven.
Who bul the most desperate adventurers in phi- REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 32."5 losophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of re- building it with the materials of confiscated property? If, however, an excessive zeal for the state should have led a pious and venerable prelate (by an- ticipation a father of the church*) to pillage his own order, and, for the good of the church and people, to take upon himself the place of grand financier of confiscation, and comptroller general of sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were, in my opinion, bound to show, by their subsequent con- duct, that they knew something of the office they assumed. When they had resolved to appropriate to the fisc, a certain portion of the landed property of their conquered country, it was their business to render their bank a real fund of credit, as far as such a bank was capable of becoming so.
To establish a current circulating credit upon any land-bank, under any circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto proved difficult at the very least. The attempt has commonly ended in bankruptcy. But when the Assembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to a defiance of economical principles, Jit might at least have been expected, that nothing .would be omitted on their part to lessen this diffi- culty, to prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy. Jit might be expected that, to render your land-bank tolerable, every means would be adopted that could (display openness and candour in the statement of :he security; every thing which could aid the * Lb Rnivere ofBosSnet.
srj oi the demand. To take things in their most favourable point of view, your condition was that of a man of a large landed estate, which he wished to dispose of tor the discharge of a debt, and the supply of certain services. Not being able instantly to sell, yon wished to mortgage. What would a man of fair intentions, and a commonly clear understanding, do in such circumstances I Ought he not first to ascertain the gross value of the estate: the charges of its management and disposition; the incumbrances perpetual and tem- porary of all kinds that affect it; then, striking a net surplus, to calculate the just value of the security? When that -urplus (the only security to the creditor) had been clearly ascertained, and properly vested in the hands of trustees; then he would indicate the parol- to be sold, and the time and conditions of sale; after this, he would admit the public creditor, if he chose it. to subscribe his stock into this new fund; or he might receive proposals for an assigned from those who would advance money to purchase this species of security.
This would be to proceed like men of business, methodically and rationally; and on the only principles of public and private credit that have an existence. The dealer would then know exactly what he purchased; and the only doubt which could hang upon his mind would be, the dread of the resumption of the spoil, which one da] I be made (perhaps with an addition of punish!
I from the sacrilegious gripe of those execrable lies who could I ecome purchasers at the auction of their innocent fellow-citizens.
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 325 An open and exact statement of the clear value of the property, and of the time, the circumstances, and the place of sale, were all necessary, to efface as much as possible the stigma that has hitherto been branded on every kind of land-bank. It be- came necessary on another principle, that is, on account of a pledge of faith previously given on that subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery concern might be established by their adherence to their first engagement. When they had finally determined on a state resource from church booty, they came, on the 14th of April 1790, to a solemn resolution on the subject; and pledged themselves to their country, "that in the statement of the public charges for each year, there should be brought to account a sum sufficient for defraying the ex- penses of the R. C. A. religion, the support of the ministers at the altars, the relief of the poor, the pensions to the ecclesiastics, secular as well as regular, of the one and of the other sex, in order that the estates and goods which are at the disposal of the nation may be disengaged of all charges, and employed by the representatives, or the legislative body, to the great and most pressing exigencies of the state." They further engaged, on the same day, that the sum necessary for the year 1791 should be forthwith determined.
In this resolution they admit it their duty to shew distinctly the expense of the above objects, which, by other resolutions, they had before engaged should be first in the order of provision. They admit that they ought to shew the estate clear and disengaged of all charges, and that they should shew it imi r mediately. Have they dune this immediately, or at any time? Have they ever burnished a rent-roll of the immoveable estates, or given in an inventory of the moveable effects which they confiscate to their tiats? In what manner they can fulfil their engagements of holding out to public service "an estate disengaged of all charges," without authen- ticating the value of the estate, or the quantum of the charges, 1 Leave it to their English admirers to explain. Instantly upon this assurance, and pre- viously to any one step, towards making it [ they issue, on the eredit of so handsome a decla- ration, sixteen millions sterling of their paper. This was manly. Who, after this masterly stroke, can doubt of their abilities in finance? — Bnt then, before any other emission of these financial indulgences, they took care at least to make good their original promise! — If such estimate, either of the value of the estate or the amount of the incumbrances, has been made, it has escaped me. I never heard of it.
At length they have spoken out, and they have made a full discovery of their abominable fraud, in holding out the church lands as a security for any debts, or any service whatsoever. They rob only to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception. I am obliged to M. de Caloirae for his reference to the document which proves this extraordinary fact: it hid by some means escaped me. Indeed it was not necessary to make out my ai as to the breach of faith on the declaration REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. ^2?
of the 14th of April, 1790. By a report of their committee it now appears, that the charge of keeping up the reduced ecclesiastical establishments, and other expenses attendant on religion, and main- taining the religious of both sexes, retained or pensioned, and the other concomitant expenses of the same nature, which they have brought upon themselves by this convulsion in property, exceeds the income of the estates acquired by it in the enormous sum of two millions sterling annually; besides a debt of seven millions and upwards. These are the calculating powers of imposture! This is the finance of philosophy! This is the result of all the delusions held out to engage a miserable people in rebellion, murder, and sa- crilege, and to make them prompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country! Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the con- fiscations of the citizens. This new experiment has succeeded like all the rest. Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high road to riches. I subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and spirited observations of M. de Calonne on this subject.* • "Ce n'est point a l'assemblee enticre que je m'adresse ici; je ne parle qu'a ceux qui l'egarent, en lui cachant sous des gazes seduisantes le but ou ils l'entrainent. C'est a eux que je dis: votre objet, vous n'en disconviendrez pas, c'est d'oter tout cspoir au clerge, et de eonsommer sa ruine; c'est-la, en ne vous soup- connant d'aucune combinaison de cupidite, d'aucun regard le jeu des eft'ets publics, c'est-la ce qu'on doit croire que vous avez en vue dans la terrible operation que vous proposez: c'est ce qui doit en etre le fruit Mais le peuple qui vous y interessez, quel In order to persuade the world of the bottomless resource of ecclesiastical confiscation, the Assembly have proceeded to other confiscation of estates in offices, which could not be done with any common colour without being compensated out of this grand confiscation of landed property. They have thrown upon this fund which was to shew a surplus, disengaged of all charges, a new charge; namely, the compensation to the whole body of the dis- banded judicature; and of all suppressed offices and estates; a charge which 1 cannot ascertain, but which unquestionably amounts to many French millions. Another of the new charges is an annuity of four hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, to be paid (if they choose to keep faith) by daily payment^, for the interest of the first Have they ever given themselves the trouble to state fairly the expense of the management of the church lands in the hands of the municipalities, to whose care, skill, and diligence, and that o! their legion of unknown under-agents. they have chosen to commit the charge of the forfeited i avantage peut-il y trouver.' En vous servant sans ccsse de lui, que faites-vous pour lui.' Rien, absolument rien; et. au con- traire. VOUS i'aites ce qui ne conduit qu'a l'accabler do nouvelles charges. Vous avez rejete, a son prejudice, unc o.Tre de 4UU millions, dont 1' acceptation pouvoit devcnir un ■■ ulagement en sa faveur; et a cette ressouice, anssi profitable que legitun avez substitue unc injustice ruincusc. qui. de vutr- charge le tresor public, et par consequent le peuple, d'un surcrnit de depense annuelle ue 50 millions au inoins, et dun rembourse- ment de ISO millions.
" Malheureux peuple! voila ce que vous vaut en dernier resultat Impropriation un du traitement dcs ministres d'une religion bienfai- - nais ils seront a votre charge: leurs char REVOLUTION IN FRANCi:. 329 and the consequence of which had been so ably pointed out by the bishop of Nancy?
But it is unnecessary to dwell on these obvious heads of incumbrance. Have they made out any clear state of the grand incumbrance of all, I mean the whole of the general and municipal establish- ments of all sorts, and compared it with the regular income by revenue? Every deficiency in these becomes a charge on the confiscated estate, before the creditor can plant his cabbages on an acre of church property. There is no other prop than this confiscation to keep the whole state from tumbling to the ground. In this situation they have purposely covered all that they ought in- dustriously to have cleared, with a thick fog; and then, blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes when they push, they drive, by the point of the bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded indeed no worse than their lords, to take their fictions for currencies, and to swallow down paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose. Then they proudly lay in their claim to a future credit, on failure of all their past •engagements, and at a time when (if in such a matter any tiling can be clear) it is clear that the surplus estates will never answer even the first of their mortgages, I mean that of the four hundred millions (or sixteen millions sterling) of assigiiats. In all this procedure I can discern neither the solid sense of plain dealing, nor the subtle dexterity of in- genious fraud. The objections within the Assembly to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation of fraud are unanswered; but they are thoroughly 330 REFLECTIONS ON THE refuted by a hundred thousand financiers in the street. These are the numbers by which the metaphysic arithmeticians compute. These are the grand calculations on which a philosophical public credit is founded in France. They cannot raise supplies; but they can raise mobs. Let them rejoice in the applauses of the club at Dundee, for their wisdom and patriotism in having thus applied the plunder of the citizens to the Bervice of the state. I hear of no address upon this subject from the directors of the bank, of England; though their approbation would be of a little more weight in the scale of credit than that of the club at Dundee. But, to do justice to the club, I believe the gentlemen who compose it to be wiser than they appear; that they will be less liberal of their money than of their addresses; and that they \ I give a dog's ear of their most rumpled and ragged Scotch paper for twenty of your fairest assignats.
Early in this year the Assembly issued paper to the amount of sixteen millions sterling: what must have been the state into which the Assemblj h:>^ brought your affairs, that the relief afforded bj BO vast a supply has been hardly perceptible? This paper also felt an almost immediate depreciation of five per cent, which in,-i little time came!■> about seven. The effect of these assignats on the receipt of the revenue is remarkable. M. Necker found that the collectors of the revenue, who received iii coin, paid the treasury in assignats. The collectors made seven per cent, by thus receiving in money, and accounting in depreciated paper. It is not REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 331 very difficult to foresee, that this must be inevitable. It was, however, not the less embarrassing. M. Necker was obliged (I believe, for a considerable part, in the market of London) to buy gold and silver for the mint, which amounted to about twelve thousand pounds above the value of the commodity gained. 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. The minister, in this very natural distress, applied to the Assembly, that they should order the collectors to pay in specie what in specie they had received. It could not escape him, that if the treasury paid three per cent, for the use of a currency, which should be returned seven per cent, worse than the minister issued it, such a'dealing could not very greatly tend to enrich the public. The Assembly took no notice of his recommendation. They were in this dilemma — If they continued to receive the assignats, cash must become an alien to their treasury: if the treasury should refuse those paper amulets, or should discountenance them in any degree, they must de- stroy the credit of their sole resource. They seem then to have made their option; and to have given some sort of credit to their paper by taking it them- selves; at the same time in their speeches they made a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather :!•'!"-! hi 1 ll ( riOJIS ON l Hi think, above legislative competence; that is, that there i^ qo difference in value between metallic money and their assignate. This v. i> a good stout proof article of faith, pronounced under an anathema, by the venerable fathers of this philosophic synod. Credat who will — certainly not Judceus -ljn//u.
A noble indignation rises in the minds of your popular leaders, on hearing the magic lantern in their show of finance compared to the fraudulent exhibitions of Mr. Law. They cannot hear to hear the sands of the Mississippi compared with the rock of the church, on which they build their system. Pray let them suppress this glorious Bpirit, until they shew to the world what piece of solid ground there is for their assignats, which they have not pre- occupied by other charges. They do injustice to that great mother fraud, to compare it with their degenerate imitation. It is not true that Law built solely on a speculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the East India trade; he added the African trade; he added the farms of all the farmed revenue of France. All these together unquestionably could ■lot support the structure which the public enthu- siasm, not he. chose to build upon these bases. But these were, however, in comparison, generous delusions. They supposed, and they aimed at. an increase of the commerce of fiance. They opened to it the whole range of the two hemispheres. They did not think of feeding France from its own sub- stance. A grand imagination found in this flight of commerce something to captivate. It was wherewithal to dazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of a mole, nuzzling and REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 333 burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is. Men were not then quite shrunk from their natural dimensions by a degrading and sordid philosophy, and fitted for low and vulgar deceptions. Above all, remember, that, in imposing on the imagination, the then managers of the system made a compliment to the freedom of men. In their fraud there was no mixture of force. This was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened age.
On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme of finance which may be urged in favour of the abilities of these gentlemen, and which has been introduced with great pomp, though not yet finally adopted, in the National Assembly. It comes with something solid in aid of the credit of the paper circulation; and much has been said of its utility and its elegance. I mean the project for coining into money the bells of the suppressed churches. This is their alchymy. There are some follies which baffle argument; which go beyond ridicule; and which excite no feeling in us but disgust; and therefore I say no more upon it.
It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all their drawing and re-drawing, on their circulation for putting off the evil day, on the play between the treasury and the Caisse d ' Escompte, and on all these old exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy of state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or B pound of gunpowder. Here then the ineta- 334 REFLEl riONS ON 1 HE physicians descend from their airy speculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? The examples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, dis- d, when their breath, their strength, their inventions, their fancies desert them, their confi- dence still maintains it> ground. In the manifest failure of their abilities, they take credit for their olence. When the revenue disappears in their hands, they have the presumption, in some of their late proceedings, to value tin nisi Ives on the relief given to the people. They did not relieve the people. If they entertained such intention-, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid? The people relieved themselves in spite of tie- Assembly.
But waving all discussion on the parties who may claim the merit of this fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, any relief to the people in any form? Mr. Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper circula- tion, lets you into the nature of this relief. His speech to the National Assembly contained a high and laboured panegyric on the inhabitants of Paris, .for the constancy and unbroken resolution with which they have borne their distress and misery. A tine picture of public felicity? What! great courage and unconquerable firmness of mind to endure benefits, and sustain redress! One would think from the speech of this learned lord mayor. that tin- Parisians, for this twelvemonth past, had been suffering the straits of some dreadful blockade. that Henry the Fourth had been stopping up the avenues to their supply, and Sully thundering with f Paris; when in r REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 385 they are besieged by no other enemies than their own madness and folly, their own credulity and perverseness. But Mr. Bailly will sooner thaw the eternal ice of his atlantic regions, than restore the central heat to Paris, whilst it remains " smitten with the cold, dry, petrific mace" of a false and unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this speech, that is, on the thirteenth of last August, the same magistrate, giving an account of his government at the bar of the same Assembly, expresses himself as follows: "In the month of July 1789," [the period of everlasting commemoration,] "the finances of "the city of Paris were yet in good order; the " expenditure was counterbalanced by the receipt, " and she had at that time a million" [forty thousand pounds sterling] " in bank. The expenses which " she has been constrained to incur, subsequent to the " Revolution, amount to 2,500,000 livres. From "these expenses, and the great falling off in the " product of the free gifts, not only a momentary, " but a total, want of money has taken place." This is the Paris upon whose nourishment, in the course of the last year, such immense sums, drawn from the vitals of all France, have been expended. As long as Paris stands in the place of ancient Rome, so long she will be maintained by the subject pro- vinces. It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics. As it happened in Rome, it may survive that re- publican domination which gave rise to it. In that case despotism itself must submit to the vices of popularity. Rome, under her emperors, united