des classes
ouvrieres et de l'industrie en France,"--one of the really great books
of the twentieth century;--Dewarmin's superb "Cent Ans de numismatique
Francaise" and sundry special treatises. The result has been that
large additions have been made regarding some important topics, and
that various other parts of my earlier work have been made more clear by
better arrangement and supplementary information.

ANDREW D. WHITE. Cornell University, September, 1912.

FOREWORD BY MR. JOHN MACKAY

I am greatly indebted to the generosity of Mr. Andrew D. White, the
distinguished American scholar, author and diplomatist, for permission
to print and to circulate privately a small edition of his exceedingly
valuable account of the great currency-making experiment of the French
Revolutionary Government. The work has been revised and considerably
enlarged by Mr. White for the purpose of the present issue.

The story of "Fiat Money Inflation in France" is one of great interest
to legislators, to economic students, and to all business and thinking
men. It records the most gigantic attempt ever made in the history of
the world by a government to create an inconvertible paper currency, and
to maintain its circulation at various levels of value. It also records
what is perhaps the greatest of all governmental efforts--with the
possible exception of Diocletian's--to enact and enforce a legal limit
of commodity prices. Every fetter that could hinder the will or thwart
the wisdom of democracy had been shattered, and in consequence every
device and expedient that untrammelled power and unrepressed optimism
could conceive were brought to bear. But the attempts failed. They left
behind them a legacy of moral and material desolation and woe, from
which one of the most intellectual and spirited races of Europe has
suffered for a century and a quarter, and will continue to suffer until
the end of time. There are limitations to the powers of governments and
of peoples that inhere in the constitution of things, and that neither
despotisms nor democracies can overcome.

Legislatures are as powerless to abrogate moral and economic laws as
they are to abrogate physical laws. They cannot convert wrong into right
nor divorce effect from cause, either by parliamentary majorities, or
by unity of supporting public opinion. The penalties of such
legislative folly will always be exacted by inexorable time. While these
propositions may be regarded