creditor, since every debtor has the right to discharge
his obligations by paying his debts in assignats. Enumerate, if
possible, all who are defrauded of private claims, all money-lenders
and stockholders who have invested in any private enterprise, either
manufacturing or mercantile, those who have loaned money on Contracts of
longer or shorter date, all sellers of real estate, with stipulations
in their deeds for more or less remote payment, all landowners who have
leased their grounds or buildings for a term of years, all holders of
annuities on private bond or on an estate, all manufacturers, merchants
and farmers who have sold their wares, goods and produce on time, all
clerks on yearly salaries and even all other employees, underlings,
servants and workmen receiving fixed salaries for a specified term.
There is not one of these persons whose capital, or income payable in
assignats, is not at once crippled in proportion to the decline in
value of assignats, so that not only the State falls into bankruptcy
but likewise every creditor in France, legally bankrupt along with it
through its fault.

In such a situation how can any enterprise be commenced or maintained?
Who dares take a risk, especially when disbursements are large and
returns remote? Who dares lend on long credits--? If loans are still
made they are not for a year but for a month, while the interest which,
before the Revolution was six, five or even four per cent. per annum, is
now two per cent. a month on securities." It soon runs up higher and,
at Paris and Strasbourg we see it rising, as in India and the Barbary
States, to four, five, six and even seven per cent. a month.[4214]

What holder of raw material, or of manufactured goods, would dare make
entries on his books as usual and allow his customer the indispensable
credit of three months? What large manufacturer would presume to make
goods up, what wholesale merchant would care to make shipments, what man
of wealth or with a competence would build, drain and construct dams
and dykes, repair, or even maintain them with the positive certainty of
delays in getting back only one-half his outlays and with the increasing
certainty of getting nothing?

During a few years the large establishments collapsed in droves:

* After the ruin of the nobles and the departure of wealthy foreigners,
every craft dependent on luxurious tastes, those of Paris and Lyons,
which were the standard for Europe, all the m