As to the wonderful phænomenon of the prodigious wealth created by the system, and annihilated in one day, I answer, that there had been no creation of wealth at all, except in consequence of the fall of interest.
1mo, We have seen that at the death of the late King of France, the interest of his debts amounted to 80 millions. Was not this a fund which ought to have been made solid and permanent? Will any man say, that a regular plan of paying this interest was a means of creating new wealth? Certainly not.
2do, These debts were secured by contracts of constitution of annual rents upon the town-house of Paris: a security taken in the name of a particular creditor, which requires a form of law to transfer.
By the scheme we have been explaining, all these securities were changed: and instead of constitutions of rent, bank notes, in which the King was equally debtor, were given.
Will any man say, that this was the means of either increasing or diminishing the wealth of France? Certainly not. A man who has a good bond in his pocket is as rich before it is paid with bank notes as after: but he has not so much money in his hands; because the bond is not money, and the notes are.
3tio, We have said that the interest of the King’s debts amounted to 80 millions a year, at 4 per cent.
We have seen how the company of the Indies were provided with a fund equal to this sum, arising from the 48 millions which the King paid for the loan of the paper with which the debts were to be paid, and from many other lucrative branches of revenue; which instead of being burthensome to the King, were, on the contrary, a means of augmenting his income, by the advanced rent the company gave for the different farms which produced them.
Had the public creditors, therefore, vested their claims in actions, they would, in consequence of that operation, have become sharers in the fund of 80 millions a year, administred by themselves, (and they would then have been the company) open to be improved by trade abroad, and by a good administration at home.
Had this system been carried on in a plain easy way, consistently with common sense, the public creditors would have been paid; the King’s revenue augmented; and it would have been put under a good and a cheap administration.
But when, by the absurd operations of changing the denominations of coin and paper, and wantonly playing with every man’s property, the creditors saw themselves standing on the brink of a precipice; and finding, instead of a good contract on the town-house of Paris, a bank note put into their hands, which might be diminished in its value by one half every month, while at the same time the coin might be raised to double, it was very natural to suppose, that the intention of the King’s ministers was to withdraw from them totally these 80 millions, less or more, to which they were entitled: in which case, there was an annihilation indeed of all the notes; but there was no annihilation of wealth: for in that case, the wealth was still the same, only it was transferred from the creditors to the King the debtor: that is, the creditors were defrauded.