k in exchange for the Church lands.
In that project great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be
exchanged. Other obstacles also presented themselves, which threw them
back again upon some project of sale. The municipalities had taken an
alarm. They would not hear of transferring the whole plunder of the
kingdom to the stockholders in Paris. Many of those municipalities had
been (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indigence. Money was
nowhere to be seen. They were therefore led to the point that was so
ardently desired. They panted for a currency of any kind which might
revive their perishing industry. The municipalities were, then, to be
admitted to a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the first
scheme (if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether
impracticable. Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The Minister of
Finance reiterated his call for supply with, a most urgent, anxious, and
boding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of
converting their bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the
old debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent, creating a new
paper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands. They
issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the
demands made upon them by the _bank of discount_, the great machine or
paper-mill of their fictitious wealth.

The spoil of the Church was now become the only resource of all their
operations in finance, the vital principle of all their politics, the
sole security for the existence of their power. It was necessary, by
all, even the most violent means, to put every individual on the same
bottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty interest to uphold this
act, and the authority of those by whom it was done. In order to force
the most reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered
their paper circulation compulsory in all payments. Those who consider
the general tendency of their schemes to this one object as a centre,
and a centre from which afterwards all their measures radiate, will not
think that I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings of the
National Assembly.

To cut off all appearance of connection between the crown and public
justice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to the
dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the Parliaments,
with all its merits and all its faults, was wholly ab