This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness, was to be supported by another resource, the twin brother of the same prolific imbecility.  The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of the patriotic contribution.  John Doe was to become security for Richard Roe.  By this scheme they took things of much price from the giver, comparatively of small value to the receiver; they ruined several trades; they pillaged the crown of its ornaments, the churches of their plate, and the people of their personal decorations.  The invention of those juvenile pretenders to liberty was in reality nothing more than a servile imitation of one of the poorest resources of doting despotism.  They took an old, huge, full-bottomed periwig out of the wardrobe of the antiquated frippery of Louis the Fourteenth, to cover the premature baldness of the National Assembly.  They produced this old-fashioned formal folly, though it had been so abundantly exposed in the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon,—­if to reasonable men it had wanted any arguments to display its mischief and insufficiency.  A device of the same kind was tried in my memory by Louis the Fifteenth, but it answered at no time.  However, the necessities of ruinous wars were some excuse for desperate projects.  The deliberations of calamity are rarely wise.  But here was a season for disposition and providence.  It was in a time of profound peace, then enjoyed for five years, and promising a much longer continuance, that they had recourse to this desperate trifling.  They were sure to lose more reputation by sporting, in their serious situation, with these toys and playthings of finance, which have filled half their journals, than could possibly be compensated by the poor temporary supply which they afforded.  It seemed as if those who adopted such projects were wholly ignorant of their circumstances, or wholly unequal to their necessities.  Whatever virtue may be in these devices, it is obvious that neither the patriotic gifts nor the patriotic contribution can ever be resorted to again.  The resources of public folly are soon exhausted.  The whole, indeed, of their scheme of revenue is to make, by any artifice, an appearance of a full reservoir for the hour, whilst at the same time they cut off the springs and living fountains of perennial supply.  The account not long since furnished by M. Necker was meant, without question, to be favorable.  He gives a flattering view of the means of getting through the year; but he expresses, as it is natural he should, some apprehension for that which was to succeed.  On this last prognostic, instead of entering into the grounds of this apprehension, in order, by a proper foresight, to prevent the prognosticated evil, M. Necker receives a sort of friendly reprimand from the President of the Assembly.