ird to a half of all
the interests in the time of Terray, without mentioning suppressions in
detail, reductions, indefinite delays in payment, and other violent and
fraudulent means which a powerful debtor employs with impunity against
a feeble creditor. "Fifty-six violations of public faith have occurred
from Henry IV down to the ministry of M. de Lomenie inclusive,"[4311]
while a last bankruptcy, more frightful than the others, loom up on the
horizon. Several persons, Bezenval and Linguet for instance, earnestly
recommend it as a necessary and salutary amputation. Not only are there
precedents for this, and in this respect the government will do no more
than follow its own example, but such is its daily practice, since it
lives only from day to day, by dint of expedients and delays, digging
one hole to stop up another, and escaping failure only through the
forced patience which it imposes on its creditors. With it, says a
contemporary, people were never sure of anything, being always obliged
to wait[4312]. "Were their capital invested in its loans, they could
never rely on a fixed date for the payment of interest. Did they build
ships, repair highways, or the soldiers clothed, they had no guarantees
for their advances, no certificates of repayment, being reduced to
calculate the chances involved in a ministerial contract as they would
the risks of a bold speculation." It pays if it can and only when it
can, even the members of the household, the purveyors of the table and
the personal attendants of the king. In 1753 the domestics of Louis XV
had received nothing for three years. We have seen how his grooms
went out to beg during the night in the streets of Versailles; how his
purveyors "hid themselves;" how, under Louis XVI in 1778, there were
792,620 francs due to the wine-merchant, and 3,467,980 francs to the
purveyor of fish and meat[4313]. In 1788, so great is the distress,
the Minister de Lomenie appropriates and expends the funds of a private
subscription raised for a hospital, and, at the time of his resignation,
the treasury is empty, save 450,000 francs, half of which he puts in
his pocket. What an administration!--In the presence of this debtor,
evidently becoming insolvent, all people, far and near, interested in
his business, consult together with alarm, and debtors are innumerable,
consisting of bankers, merchants, manufacturers, employees, lenders of
every kind and degree, and, in the front rank, the capit