e; What it brought; and How it ended.

It came by seeking a remedy for a comparatively small evil in an evil
infinitely more dangerous. To cure a disease temporary in its character,
a corrosive poison was administered, which ate out the vitals of French
prosperity.

It progressed according to a law in social physics which we may call
the "_law of accelerating issue and depreciation._" It was comparatively
easy to refrain from the first issue; it was exceedingly difficult to
refrain from the second; to refrain from the third and those following
was practically impossible.

It brought, as we have seen, commerce and manufactures, the mercantile
interest, the agricultural interest, to ruin. It brought on these the
same destruction which would come to a Hollander opening the dykes of
the sea to irrigate his garden in a dry summer.

It ended in the complete financial, moral and political prostration of
France-a prostration from which only a Napoleon could raise it.

But this history would be incomplete without a brief sequel, showing how
that great genius profited by all his experience. When Bonaparte took
the consulship the condition of fiscal affairs was appalling. The
government was bankrupt; an immense debt was unpaid. The further
collection of taxes seemed impossible; the assessments were in hopeless
confusion. War was going on in the East, on the Rhine, and in Italy, and
civil war, in La Vendee. All the armies had long been unpaid, and the
largest loan that could for the moment be effected was for a sum hardly
meeting the expenses of the government for a single day. At the first
cabinet council Bonaparte was asked what he intended to do. He replied,
"I will pay cash or pay nothing." From this time he conducted all his
operations on this basis. He arranged the assessments, funded the debt,
and made payments in cash; and from this time--during all the campaigns
of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, down to the Peace of
Tilsit in 1807--there was but one suspension of specie payment, and this
only for a few days. When the first great European coalition was formed
against the Empire, Napoleon was hard pressed financially, and it was
proposed to resort to paper money; but he wrote to his minister, "While
I live I will never resort to irredeemable paper." He never did, and
France, under this determination, commanded all the gold she needed.
When Waterloo came, with the invasion of the Allies, with war on her
own