llion francs; in the second
six months of 1793 the war and provisions swallowed up three hundred
million francs per month, and the more they threw into the two gulfs the
deeper they became.[4211]

Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on
increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one's resources, and piecemeal,
as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not to be had on
the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in circulation; one
pays tradesmen with written promises in the future, and thus exhausts
one's credit. Such is paper money and the assignats, the third and most
efficient way for wasting a fortune and which the Jacobins did not fail
to make the most of.--Under the Constituent Assembly, through a remnant
of good sense and good faith, efforts were at first made to guarantee
the fulfillment of written promises the holders of assignats were almost
secured by a first mortgage on the national possessions, which had been
given to them coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this
guarantee, as well as not to issue any more assignats.[4212] But they
did not keep faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage
inoperative and, as all chances of re-payment disappeared, its value
declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report
of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin
financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to
turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats
to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have
already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind
faster. This is why the guarantee, vainly increased, no longer suffices
for the monstrous, disproportionate mortgage; it exceeds all limits,
covers nothing, and sinks through its own weight. At Paris, the assignat
of one hundred francs is worth in specie, in the month of June, 1791,
eighty-five francs, in January, 1792, only sixty-six francs, in March,
1792, only fifty. three francs; rising in value at the end of the
Legislative Assembly, owing to fresh confiscations, it falls back to
fifty-five francs in January, 1793, to forty-seven francs in April, to
forty francs in June, to thirty-three francs in July.[4213]--Thus
are the creditors of the State defrauded of a third, one-half, and
two-thirds of their investment, and not alone the creditors of the State
but every other