F. More purchases! and what should we buy?  Doubtless, useful articles—­things likely to procure for us substantial gratification—­such as provisions, stuffs, houses, books, pictures.  You should begin, then, by proving that all these things create themselves; you must suppose the Mint melting ingots of gold which have fallen from the moon; or that the Board of Assignats be put in action at the national printing office; for you cannot reasonably think that if the quantity of corn, cloth, ships, hats and shoes remains the same, the share of each of us can be greater, because we each go to market with a greater number of real or fictitious money.  Remember the players.  In the social order, the useful things are what the workers place under the candlestick, and the crowns which circulate from hand to hand are the counters.  If you multiply the francs without multiplying the useful things, the only result will be, that more francs will be required for each exchange, just as the players required more counters for each deposit.  You have the proof of this in what passes for gold silver, and copper.  Why does the same exchange require more copper than silver, more silver than gold?  Is it not because these metals are distributed in the world in different proportions?  What reason have you to suppose that if gold were suddenly to become as abundant as silver, it would not require as much of one as of the other to buy a house?

B. You may be right, but I should prefer your being wrong.  In the midst of the sufferings which surround us, so distressing in themselves, and so dangerous in their consequences, I have found some consolation in thinking that there was an easy method of making all the members of the community happy.

F. Even if gold and silver were true riches, it would be no easy matter to increase the amount of them in a country where there are no mines.

B. No, but it is easy to substitute something else.  I agree with you that gold and silver can do but little service, except as a mere means of exchange.  It is the same with paper money, bank-notes, &c.  Then, if we had all of us plenty of the latter, which it is so easy to create, we might all buy a great deal, and should want for nothing.  Your cruel theory dissipates hopes, illusions, if you will, whose principle is assuredly very philanthropic.

F. Yes, like all other barren dreams formed to promote universal felicity.  The extreme facility of the means which you recommend is quite sufficient to expose its hollowness.  Do you believe that if it were merely needful to print bank-notes in order to satisfy all our wants, our tastes and desires, that mankind would have been contented to go on till now, without having recourse to this plan?  I agree with you that the discovery is tempting.  It would immediately banish from the world, not only plunder, in its diversified and deplorable forms, but even labour itself, except the Board of Assignats.  But we have yet to learn how assignats are to purchase houses, which no one would have built; corn, which no one would have raised; stuffs, which no one would have taken the trouble to weave.