ant of the Royal
court. [36] The artful plundering of the people at large was bad enough,
but worse still was this growing corruption in official and legislative
circles. Out of the speculating and gambling of the inflation period
grew luxury, and, out of this, corruption. It grew as naturally as a
fungus on a muck heap. It was first felt in business operations,
but soon began to be seen in the legislative body and in journalism.
Mirabeau was, by no means, the only example. Such members of the
legislative body as Jullien of Toulouse, Delaunay of Angers, Fabre
d'Eglantine and their disciples, were among the most noxious of those
conspiring by legislative action to raise and depress securities for
stock-jobbing purposes. Bribery of legislators followed as a matter of
course, Delaunay, Jullien and Chabot accepted a bribe of five hundred
thousand _livres_ for aiding legislation calculated to promote the
purposes of certain stock-jobbers. It is some comfort to know that
nearly all concerned were guillotined for it. [37]

It is true that the number of these corrupt legislators was small, far
less than alarmists led the nation to suppose, but there were enough to
cause wide-spread distrust, cynicism and want of faith in any patriotism
or any virtue.

II.

Even worse than this was the breaking down of the morals of the country
at large, resulting from the sudden building up of ostentatious wealth
in a few large cities, and from the gambling, speculative spirit
spreading from these to the small towns and rural districts. From this
was developed an even more disgraceful result,--the decay of a true
sense of national good faith. The patriotism which the fear of the
absolute monarchy, the machinations of the court party, the menaces of
the army and the threats of all monarchical Europe had been unable
to shake was gradually disintegrated by this same speculative,
stock-jobbing habit fostered by the superabundant currency. At the
outset, in the discussions preliminary to the first issue of paper
money, Mirabeau and others who had favored it had insisted that
patriotism as well as an enlightened self-interest, would lead the
people to keep up the value of paper money. The very opposite of this
was now revealed, for there appeared, as another outgrowth of this
disease, what has always been seen under similar circumstances. It is
a result of previous, and a cause of future evils. This outgrowth was a
vast debtor class in the