“And what was this national property?”
“In this case, it meant the confiscated estates which had fallen into the hands of the government, and were sold by auction: and the reason why this new kind of money was issued was because the revolutionary government, however rich in confiscated estates, was much in want of money, and thought this might be a good way of converting the one into the other. You see, however, that whether these slips of paper would bear the value of 100 francs, depended on the proportion of the assignâts to the purchasable property, and of both to the existing currency, and to the quantity of other commodities.”
“And, probably, the government, like many other governments, altered this proportion continually by new issues of paper money, while there was no corresponding increase of the property it represented?”
“Just so. More estates were confiscated, but the assignâts multiplied at a tenfold rate; driving better money out of the market, but still super-abounding. Prices rose enormously; and in proportion as they rose, people grew extravagant.”
“That seems an odd consequence of high prices.”
“If prices had been high from a scarcity of commodities, people would have grown economical; but the rise of price was in this case only a symptom of the depreciation of money. Every one, being afraid that it would fall still lower, was anxious to spend it while it remained worth anything. I well remember my poor father coming in and telling us that he had purchased a chateau in the provinces with its furniture. ‘Purchased a chateau!’ cried my mother. ‘When you have no fortune to leave to your children, what madness to purchase an estate in the provinces!’ ‘It would be greater madness,’ my father replied, ‘to keep my money till that which now purchases an estate will scarcely buy a joint of meat. If I could lay by my money, I would: as I cannot, I must take the first investment that offers.’ And he proved to be right; for the deplorable poverty we soon suffered was yet a less evil than the punishment which my father could scarcely have escaped if he had kept his assignâts.”
“Do you mean legal punishment?”
“Yes. The government issued orders that its own most sapient plan should not fail. There was to be no difference between metal money and assignâts, under pain of six years’ imprisonment in irons for every bargain in which the one should be taken at a greater or less value than the other.”
“How stupid! How barbarous!” exclaimed everybody. “Almost the entire population must have been imprisoned in irons, if the law had been executed: for they had little money but assignâts, and no power on earth could make paper promises valuable by calling them so.”
“Yet, when the law was found inefficient, the punishment was increased. Instead of six years, the offenders were now to be imprisoned twenty. As this expedient failed, more and more violent ones were resorted to, till the oppression became intolerable. All concealment of stock, every attempt to avoid bringing the necessaries of life to market, to be sold at the prices fixed by the government, every evasion of an offered purchase, however disadvantageous, was now made punishable by death.”