year the maximum loan was raised to 50 florins,
in 1669 to 100 florins, and in 1745 it was fixed at 120 florins, or 150
francs. At this figure it stood when the First Republic began its
experiments. The fund was then known as 'the true Mont-de-Piete,' and
was carried on under letters patent granted in 1609 by the Archduke
Albert of Austria. When Lille became French in 1667, Louis XIV had to
recognise and confirm all the rights and titles of this benevolent
institution.

It had rendered great service to the industries of Lille during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of the funds enabling
the managers to lend sums to weavers on their goods when trade fell off,
and so relieving them from the necessity of parting with them for less
than their value. Just before the Revolution the Masurel Fund amounted
to 455,454 francs, of which 256,627 francs were in cash or in loans, and
the rest in state funds and houses, yielding a revenue of 8,307 francs.

On January 23, 1794, the National Convention coolly ordered that all
'objects of necessity deposited in any Mont-de-Piete for an amount not
exceeding 20 francs should be at once restored without payment to their
owners, and all such objects deposited for amounts below 50 and above 20
francs on payment, without interest, of the amount beyond 20 francs!'

This 'liberal' legislation had been preceded on August 24, 1793, by
another act of spoliation which ordered 'the payment of the capital of
all sums at interest to be made in _assignats_, and the conversion of
all the debts of the Communes, and of the suppressed public
organisations throughout France into State debts.

In consequence of these measures the whole property of the Masurel fund
was found in 1803, when Napoleon began to overhaul the chaos to which
the lunatics and plunderers of the Republic had reduced France, to
amount to no more than 10,408 francs in real estate. This was the way in
which the 'principles of 1789' developed the benevolent institutions of
France, and introduced a new era!

The authorities of Lille had the good sense and forecast thereupon to
suspend the operations of the true _Mont-de-Piete_, and to set about
restoring the fund as far and as fast as was possible. The Christian
institution of Masurel had fared better than the 'Lombards.' This latter
establishment had to be formally closed in 1796, as it was then found to
have no more than 86,000 francs in its treasury, and this in
_a