at market?  What is the remedy?  Issue new assignats.—­Mais si maladia opiniatria non vult se garire, quid illi facere?  Assignare; postea assignare; ensuita assignare.  The word is a trifle altered.  The Latin of your present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy; their wisdom and the variety of their resources are the same.  They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that of the raven.

Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it with the materials of confiscated property?  If, however, an excessive zeal for the state should have led a pious and venerable prelate (by anticipation a father of the Church[132]) to pillage his own order, and, for the good of the Church and people, to take upon himself the place of grand financier of confiscation and comptroller-general of sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were, in my opinion, bound to show, by their subsequent conduct, that they knew something of the office they assumed.  When they had resolved to appropriate to the fisc a certain portion of the landed property of their conquered country, it was their business to render their bank a real fund of credit,—­as far as such a bank was capable of becoming so.

To establish a current circulating credit upon any land-bank, under any circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto proved difficult at the very least.  The attempt has commonly ended in bankruptcy.  But when the Assembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to a defiance of economical principles, it might at least have been expected that nothing would be omitted on their part to lessen this difficulty, to prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy.  It might be expected, that, to render your land-bank tolerable, every means would be adopted that could display openness and candor in the statement of the security, everything which could aid the recovery of the demand.  To take things in their most favorable point of view, your condition was that of a man of a large landed estate which he wished to dispose of for the discharge of a debt and the supply of certain services.  Not being able instantly to sell, you wished to mortgage.  What would a man of fair intentions and a commonly clear understanding do in such circumstances?  Ought he not first to ascertain the gross value of the estate, the charges of its management and disposition, the incumbrances perpetual and temporary of all kinds that affect it,—­then, striking a net surplus, to calculate the just value of the security?  When that surplus (the only security to the creditor) had been clearly ascertained, and properly vested in the hands of trustees, then he would indicate the parcels to be sold, and the time and conditions of