B. One thing strikes me in your argument.  You say yourself, that if there is no gain, at any rate there is no loss in multiplying the instrument of exchange, as is seen by the instance of the players, who were quits by a very mild deception.  Why, then, refuse the philosopher’s stone, which would teach us the secret of changing flints into gold, and, in the meantime, into paper money?  Are you so blindly wedded to your logic, that you would refuse to try an experiment where there can be no risk?  If you are mistaken, you are depriving the nation, as your numerous adversaries believe, of an immense advantage.  If the error is on their side, no harm can result, as you yourself say, beyond the failure of a hope.  The measure, excellent in their opinion, in yours is negative.  Let it be tried, then, since the worst which can happen is not the realization of an evil, but the non-realization of a benefit.

F. In the first place, the failure of a hope is a very great misfortune to any people.  It is also very undesirable that the Government should announce the re-imposition of several taxes on the faith of a resource which must infallibly fail.  Nevertheless, your remark would deserve some consideration, if, after the issue of paper money and its depreciation, the equilibrium of values should instantly and simultaneously take place, in all things and in every part of the country.  The measure would tend, as in my example of the players, to a universal mystification, upon which the best thing we could do would be to look at one another and laugh.  But this is not in the course of events.  The experiment has been made, and every time a despot has altered the money ...

B. Who says anything about altering the money?

F. Why, to force people to take in payment scraps of paper which have been officially baptized francs, or to force them to receive, as weighing five grains, a piece of silver which weighs only two and a half, but which has been officially named a franc, is the same thing, if not worse; and all the reasoning which can be made in favour of assignats has been made in favour of legal false money.  Certainly, looking at it, as you did just now, and as you appear to be doing still, if it is believed that to multiply the instruments of exchange is to multiply the exchanges themselves as well as the things exchanged, it might very reasonably be thought that the most simple means was to double the crowns, and to cause the law to give to the half the name and value of the whole.  Well, in both cases, depreciation is inevitable.  I think I have told you the cause.  I must also inform you, that this depreciation, which, with paper, might go on till it came to nothing, is effected by continually making dupes; and of these, poor people, simple persons, workmen and countrymen are the chief.

B. I see; but stop a little.  This dose of Economy is rather too strong for once.