eriod, in reporting his
speech, noted it with the very significant remark, "This discourse was
loudly applauded."

To him replied Brillat-Savarin. He called attention to the depreciation
of _assignats_ already felt. He tried to make the Assembly see that
natural laws work as inexorably in France as elsewhere; he predicted
that if this new issue were made there would come a depreciation of
thirty per cent. Singular, that the man who so fearlessly stood against
this tide of unreason has left to the world simply a reputation as
the most brilliant cook that ever existed! He was followed by the Abbe
Goutes, who declared,--what seems grotesque to those who have read
the history of an irredeemable paper currency in any country--that
new issues of paper money "will supply a circulating medium which will
protect public morals from corruption." [17]

Into this debate was brought a report by Necker. He was not, indeed,
the great statesman whom France especially needed at this time, of all
times. He did not recognize the fact that the nation was entering a
great revolution, but he could and did see that, come what might,
there were simple principles of finance which must be adhered to. Most
earnestly, therefore, he endeavored to dissuade the Assembly from
the proposed issue; suggesting that other means could be found for
accomplishing the result, and he predicted terrible evils. But the
current was running too fast. The only result was that Necker was
spurned as a man of the past; he sent in his resignation and left
France forever. [18] The paper-money demagogues shouted for joy at his
departure; their chorus rang through the journalism of the time. No
words could express their contempt for a man who was unable to see the
advantages of filling the treasury with the issues of a printing press.
Marat, Hebert, Camille Desmoulins and the whole mass of demagogues so
soon to follow them to the guillotine were especially jubilant. [19]

Continuing the debate, Rewbell attacked Necker, saying that the
_assignats_ were not at par because there were not yet enough of them;
he insisted that payments for public lands be received in _assignats_
alone; and suggested that the church bells of the kingdom be melted down
into small money. Le Brun attacked the whole scheme in the Assembly, as
he had done in the Committee, declaring that the proposal, instead
of relieving the nation, would wreck it. The papers of the time very
significantly say that