your client, has given you an acknowledgment, a title, a privilege from the republic, a counter, a crown in fact, which only differs from executive titles by bearing its value in itself; and if you are able to read with your mind’s eye the inscriptions stamped upon it you will distinctly decipher these words:—­“Pay the bearer a service equivalent to what he has rendered to society, the value received being shown, proved, and measured by that which is represented by me.” Now, you give up your crown to me.  Either my title to it is gratuitous, or it is a claim.  If you give it me as payment for a service, the following is the result:—­your account with society for real satisfactions is regulated, balanced, and closed.  You had rendered it a service for a crown, you now restore the crown for a service; as far as you are concerned, you are clear.  As for me, I am just in the position in which you were just now.  It is I who am now in advance to society for the service which I have just rendered it in your person.  I am become its creditor for the value of the labour which I have performed for you, and which I might devote to myself.  It is into my hands, then, that the title of this credit—­the proof of this social debt—­ought to pass.  You cannot say that I am any richer; if I am entitled to receive, it is because I have given.  Still less can you say that society is a crown richer, because one of its members has a crown more, and another has one less.  For if you let me have this crown gratis, it is certain that I shall be so much the richer, but you will be so much the poorer for it; and the social fortune, taken in a mass, will have undergone no change, because as I have already said, this fortune consists in real services, in effective satisfactions, in useful things.  You were a creditor to society, you made me a substitute to your rights, and it signifies little to society, which owes a service, whether it pays the debt to you or to me.  This is discharged as soon as the bearer of the claim is paid.

B. But if we all had a great number of crowns we should obtain from society many services.  Would not that be very desirable?

F. You forget that in the process which I have described, and which is a picture of the reality, we only obtain services from society because we have bestowed some upon it.  Whoever speaks of a service, speaks at the same time of a service received and returned, for these two terms imply each other, so that the one must always be balanced by the other.  It is impossible for society to render more services than it receives, and yet this is the chimera which is being pursued by means of the multiplication of coins, of paper money, &c.

B. All that appears very reasonable in theory, but in practice I cannot help thinking, when I see how things go, that if, by some fortunate circumstance, the number of crowns could be multiplied in such a way that each of us could see his little property doubled, we should all be more at our ease; we should all make more purchases, and trade would receive a powerful stimulus.