knowing the amount of his
pay? Who will study to increase what none can estimate? Who will
accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he saves? If you
abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth
would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a
jackdaw.

The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a
nation of gamesters is this,--that, though all are forced to play, few
can understand the game, and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of that knowledge. The many must be the dupes of the few who
conduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it must have on
the country-people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day to
day; not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first brings
his corn to market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to take the
assignat at par; when he goes to the shop with this money, he finds it
seven per cent the worse for crossing the way. This market he will not
readily resort to again. The towns-people will be inflamed; they will
force the country-people to bring their corn. Resistance will begin, and
the murders of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all France.

What signifies the empty compliment paid to the country, by giving it,
perhaps, more than its share in the theory of your representation? Where
have you placed the real power over moneyed and landed circulation?
Where have you placed the means of raising and falling the value of
every man's freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add ten
per cent to the possessions of every man in France must be the masters
of every man in France. The whole of the power obtained by this
Revolution will settle in the towns among the burghers, and the moneyed
directors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the
peasant have, none of them, habits or inclinations or experience which
can lead them to any share in this the sole source of power and
influence now left in France. The very nature of a country life, the
very nature of landed property, in all the occupations and all the
pleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the sole way
of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossible amongst
country-people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the
industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the
nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst