t in
stores of goods or national lands. [69] Financiers and men of large means
were shrewd enough to put as much of their property as possible into
objects of permanent value. The working classes had no such foresight
or skill or means. On them finally came the great crushing weight of the
loss. After the first collapse came up the cries of the starving. Roads
and bridges were neglected; many manufactures were given up in utter
helplessness." To continue, in the words of the historian already cited:
"None felt any confidence in the future in any respect; few dared to
make a business investment for any length of time and it was accounted a
folly to curtail the pleasures of the moment, to accumulate or save for
so uncertain a future." [70]

This system in finance was accompanied by a system in politics no less
startling, and each system tended to aggravate the other. The wild
radicals, having sent to the guillotine first all the Royalists and
next all the leading Republicans they could entrap, the various
factions began sending each other to the same destination:--Hebertists,
Dantonists, with various other factions and groups, and, finally, the
Robespierrists, followed each other in rapid succession. After these
declaimers and phrase-mongers had thus disappeared there came to power,
in October, 1795, a new government,--mainly a survival of the more
scoundrelly,--the Directory. It found the country utterly impoverished
and its only resource at first was to print more paper and to issue even
while wet from the press. These new issues were made at last by the two
great committees, with or without warrant of law, and in greater sums
than ever. Complaints were made that the array of engravers and printers
at the mint could not meet the demand for _assignats_--that they
could produce only from sixty to seventy millions per day and that
the government was spending daily from eighty to ninety millions. Four
thousand millions of _francs_ were issued during one month, a little
later three thousand millions, a little later four thousand millions,
until there had been put forth over thirty-five thousand millions. The
purchasing power of this paper having now become almost nothing, it was
decreed, on the 22nd of December, 1795, that the whole amount issued
should be limited to forty thousand millions, including all that had
previously been put forth and that when this had been done the copper
plates should be broken. Even in spite of