Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance
could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the
state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of
rebuilding it with the materials of confiscated property? If, however,
an excessive zeal for the state should have led a pious and
venerable prelate (by anticipation a father of the church*) to pillage
his own order and, for the good of the church and people, to take upon
himself the place of grand financier of confiscation and
comptroller-general of sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were in my
opinion bound to show by their subsequent conduct that they knew
something of the office they assumed. When they had resolved to
appropriate to the Fisc a certain portion of the landed property of
their conquered country, it was their business to render their bank
a real fund of credit, as far as such a bank was capable of becoming
so.
* La Bruyere of Bossuet.
To establish a current circulating credit upon any Land-bank,
under any circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto proved difficult at
the very least. The attempt has commonly ended in bankruptcy. But when
the Assembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to a defiance of
economical principles, it might at least have been expected that
nothing would be omitted on their part to lessen this difficulty, to
prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy.
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