, that the relief afforded by so vast a supply
has been hardly perceptible? This paper also felt an almost immediate
depreciation of five per cent, which in a little time came to about
seven. The effect of these assignats on the receipt of the revenue is
remarkable. M. Necker found that the collectors of the revenue, who
received in coin, paid the treasury in assignats. The collectors made
seven per cent by thus receiving in money, and accounting in depreciated
paper. It was not very difficult to foresee that this must be
inevitable. It was, however, not the less embarrassing. M. Necker was
obliged (I believe, for a considerable part, in the market of London) to
buy gold and silver for the mint, which amounted to about twelve
thousand pounds above the value of the commodity gained. That minister
was of opinion, that, whatever their secret nutritive virtue might be,
the state could not live upon assignats alone,--that some real silver
was necessary, particularly for the satisfaction of those who, having
iron in their hands, were not likely to distinguish themselves for
patience, when they should perceive, that, whilst an increase of pay was
held out to them in real money, it was again to be fraudulently drawn
back by depreciated paper. The minister, in this very natural distress,
applied to the Assembly, that they should order the collectors to pay in
specie what in specie they had received. It could not escape him, that,
if the Treasury paid three per cent for the use of a currency which
should be returned seven per cent worse than the minister issued it,
such a dealing could not very greatly tend to enrich the public. The
Assembly took no notice of his recommendation. They were in this
dilemma: If they continued to receive the assignats, cash must become an
alien to their Treasury; if the Treasury should refuse those paper
_amulets_, or should discountenance them in any degree, they must
destroy the credit of their sole resource. They seem, then, to have made
their option, and to have given some sort of credit to their paper by
taking it themselves; at the same time, in their speeches, they made a
sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather think, above
legislative competence,--that is, that there is no difference in value
between metallic money and their assignats. This was a good, stout,
proof article of faith, pronounced under an anathema by the venerable
fathers of this philosophic synod. _Credat_ who will,--