d in paper.

When the funding system began, it was not doubted that the loans that
had been borrowed would be repaid. Government not only propagated that
belief, but it began paying them off. In time this profession came to be
abandoned: and it is not difficult to see that bank notes will march
the same way; for the amount of them is only another debt under another
name; and the probability is that Mr. Pitt will at last propose
funding them. In that case bank notes will not be so valuable as French
assignats. The assignats have a solid property in reserve, in the
national domains; bank notes have none; and, besides this, the English
revenue must then sink down to what the amount of it was before the
funding system began--between three and four millions; one of which
the _arch-treasurer_ would require for himself, and the arch-treasurer
_apparent_ would require three-quarters of a million more to pay his
debts. "_In France_," says Sterne, "_they order these things better_."

I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all
nations; for this work will be published in all languages. In doing
this, I have done an act of justice to those numerous citizens of
neutral nations who have been imposed upon by that fraudulent system,
and who have property at stake upon the event.

As an individual citizen of America, and as far as an individual can
go, I have revenged (if I may use the expression without any immoral
meaning) the piratical depredations committed on the American commerce
by the English government. I have retaliated for France on the subject
of finance: and I conclude with retorting on Mr. Pitt the expression he
used against France, and say, that the English system of finance "is on
the verge, nay even in the

GULPH OF BANKRUPTCY."

Thomas Paine.

PARIS, 19th Germinal. 4th year of the Republic, April 8, 1796.

XXVII. FORGETFULNESS.(1)

1 This undated composition, of much biographical interest,
was shown by Paine to Henry Redhead Yorke, who visited him
in Paris (1802), and was allowed to copy the only portions
now preserved. In the last of Yorke's Letters from France
(Lond., 1814), thirty-three pages are given to Paine. Under
the name "Little Corner of the World," Lady Smyth wrote
cheering letters to Paine in his prison, and he replied to
his then unknown correspondent under the name of "The Castle
in die Air." After his release he discover