estate was set apart to an amount fully equal to the nominal value of
the issue, and any one offering any amount of the _mandats_ could at
once take possession of government lands; the price of the lands to be
determined by two experts, one named by the government and one by the
buyer, and without the formalities and delays previously established in
regard to the purchase of lands with _assignats_.

Perhaps the most whimsical thing in the whole situation was the
fact that the government, pressed as it was by demands of all sorts,
continued to issue the old _assignats_ at the same time that it was
discrediting them by issuing the new _mandats_. And yet in order to make
the _mandats_ "as good as gold" it was planned by forced loans and other
means to reduce the quantity of _assignats_ in circulation, so that the
value of each _assignat_ should be raised to one-thirtieth of the value
of gold, then to make _mandats_ legal tender and to substitute them for
_assignats_ at the rate of one for thirty. Never were great expectations
more cruelly disappointed. Even before the _mandats_ could be issued
from the press they fell to thirty-five per cent of their nominal value;
from this they speedily fell to fifteen, and soon after to five per
cent, and finally, in August, 1796, six months from their first issue,
to three per cent. This plan failed--just as it failed in New England in
1737; just as it failed under our own Confederation in 1781; just as it
failed under the Southern Confederacy during our Civil War. [72]

To sustain this new currency the government resorted to every method
that ingenuity could devise. Pamphlets suited to people of every
capacity were published explaining its advantages. Never was there more
skillful puffing. A pamphlet signed "Marchant" and dedicated to "People
of Good Faith" was widely circulated, in which Marchant took pains
to show the great advantage of the _mandats_ as compared with
_assignats_,--how land could be more easily acquired with them; how
their security was better than with _assignats_; how they could not, by
any possibility, sink in values as the _assignats_ had done. But even
before the pamphlet was dry from the press the depreciation of the
_mandats_ had refuted his entire argument. [73]

The old plan of penal measures was again pressed. Monot led off by
proposing penalties against those who shall speak publicly against
the _mandats_; Talot thought the penalties ought to be made es