With you a man can
neither earn nor buy his dinner without a speculation. What he
receives in the morning will not have the same value at night. What he
is compelled to take as pay for an old debt will not be received as
the same when he comes to pay a debt contracted by himself, nor will
it be the same when by prompt payment he would avoid contracting any
debt at all. Industry must wither away. Economy must be driven from
your country. Careful provision will have no existence. Who will labor
without knowing the amount of his pay? Who will study to increase what
none can estimate? Who will accumulate, when he does not know the
value of what he saves? If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to
accumulate your paper wealth would be not the providence of a man, but
the distempered instinct of a jackdaw.
The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a
nation of gamesters is this, that though all are forced to play, few
can understand the game; and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of the knowledge. The many must be the dupes of the few who
conduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it must have on
the country people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day
to day, not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first
brings his corn to market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him
to take the assignat at par; when he goes to the shop with his
money, he finds it seven per cent the worse for crossing the way.
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