As to the ecclesiastical charge, whether as a compensation for losses, or a provision for religion, of which they made at first a great parade, and entered into a solemn engagement in favor of it, it was estimated at a much larger sum than they could expect from the Church property, movable or immovable:  they are completely bankrupt as to that article.  It is just what they wish; and it is not productive of any serious inconvenience.  The non-payment produces discontent and occasional sedition; but is only by fits and spasms, and amongst the country people, who are of no consequence.  These seditions furnish new pretexts for non-payment to the Church establishment, and help the Assembly wholly to get rid of the clergy, and indeed of any form of religion, which is not only their real, but avowed object.

[Sidenote:  Want of money how supplied.]

They are embarrassed, indeed, in the highest degree, but not wholly resourceless.  They are without the species of money.  Circulation of money is a great convenience, but a substitute for it may be found.  Whilst the great objects of production and consumption, corn, cattle, wine, and the like, exist in a country, the means of giving them circulation, with more or less convenience, cannot be wholly wanting.  The great confiscation of the Church and of the crown lands, and of the appanages of the princes, for the purchase of all which their paper is always received at par, gives means of continually destroying and continually creating; and this perpetual destruction and renovation feeds the speculative market, and prevents, and will prevent, till that fund of confiscation begins to fail, a total depreciation.

[Sidenote:  Moneyed interest not necessary to them.]

But all consideration of public credit in France is of little avail at present.  The action, indeed, of the moneyed interest was of absolute necessity at the beginning of this Revolution; but the French republic can stand without any assistance from that description of men, which, as things are now circumstanced, rather stands in need of assistance itself from the power which alone substantially exists in France:  I mean the several districts and municipal republics, and the several clubs which direct all their affairs and appoint all their magistrates.  This is the power now paramount to everything, even to the Assembly itself called National and that to which tribunals, priesthood, laws, finances, and both descriptions of military power are wholly subservient, so far as the military power of either description yields obedience to any name of authority.

The world of contingency and political combination is much larger than we are apt to imagine.  We never can say what may or may not happen, without a view to all the actual circumstances.  Experience, upon other data than those, is of all things the most delusive.  Prudence in new cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect.  A constant vigilance and attention to the train of things as they successively emerge, and to act on what they direct, are the only sure courses.  The physician that let blood, and by blood-letting cured one kind of plague, in the next added to its ravages.  That power goes with property is not universally true, and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable may mislead us very fatally.