delusion, conclude their arguments by
proposing the emission of _assignats_. I suppose they must talk of
_assignats_, as no other language would be understood. All experience of
their inefficacy does not in the least discourage them. Are the old
_assignats_ depreciated at market? What is the remedy? Issue new
_assignats_.--_Mais si maladia opiniatria non vult se garire, quid illi
facere? Assignare; postea assignare; ensuita assignare_. 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 summer and plenty,
their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that of the raven.

Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy 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 rebuilding it with
the materials of confiscated property? If, however, an excessive zeal
for the state should have led a pious and venerable prelate (by
anticipation a father of the Church[132]) 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 conduct, 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, it might at least have been expected that nothing
would be omitted on their part to lessen this difficulty, to prevent
any aggravation of this bankruptcy. It might be expected, that, to
render your land-bank tolerable, every means would be adopted that could
display openness and candor in the statement of the security, everything
which could aid the recovery of the demand. To take things in their most
favorable point of v