wealth for the
country at large.

Greatest force of all, on September 27, 1790, came Mirabeau's final
speech. The most sober and conservative of his modern opponents speaks
of its eloquence as "prodigious." In this the great orator dwelt first
on the political necessity involved, declaring that the most pressing
need was to get the government lands into the hands of the people, and
so to commit to the nation and against the old privileged classes the
class of landholders thus created.

Through the whole course of his arguments there is one leading point
enforced with all his eloquence and ingenuity--the excellence of the
proposed currency, its stability and its security. He declares that,
being based on the pledge of public lands and convertible into them, the
notes are better secured than if redeemable in specie; that the precious
metals are only employed in the secondary arts, while the French paper
money represents the first and most real of all property, the source of
all production, the land; that while other nations have been obliged to
emit paper money, none have ever been so fortunate as the French nation,
for the reason that none had ever before been able to give this landed
security; that whoever takes French paper money has practically a
mortgage to secure it,--and on landed property which can easily be sold
to satisfy his claims, while other nations have been able only to give a
vague claim on the entire nation. "And," he ones, "I would rather have a
mortgage on a garden than on a kingdom!"

Other arguments of his are more demagogical. He declares that the only
interests affected will be those of bankers and capitalists, but
that manufacturers will see prosperity restored to them. Some of his
arguments seem almost puerile, as when he says, "If gold has been
hoarded through timidity or malignity, the issue of paper will show that
gold is not necessary, and it will then come forth." But, as a whole,
the speech was brilliant; it was often interrupted by applause; it
settled the question. People did not stop to consider that it was the
dashing speech of an orator and not the matured judgment of a financial
expert; they did not see that calling Mirabeau or Talleyrand to advise
upon a monetary policy, because they had shown boldness in danger and
strength in conflict, was like summoning a prize-fighter to mend a
watch.

In vain did Maury show that, while the first issues of John Law's paper
had brought prosp