[11]
Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on
increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one's resources, and
piecemeal, as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not
to be had on the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in
circulation; one pays tradesmen with written promises in the future,
and thus exhausts one's credit. Such is paper money and the
assignats, the third and most efficient way for wasting a fortune and
which the Jacobins did not fail to make the most of. - Under the
Constituent Assembly, through a remnant of good sense and good faith,
efforts were at first made to guarantee the fulfillment of written
promises the holders of assignats were almost secured by a first
mortgage on the national possessions, which had been given to them
coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this guarantee,
as well as not to issue any more assignats.[12] But they did not keep
faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage
inoperative and, as all chances of re-payment disappeared, its value
declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report
of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin
financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to
turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats
to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have
already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind
faster.
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