suppressed (I speak of coined money); it was pretended that since the
time of Abraham,--Abraham, who paid ready money for the sepulchre of
Sarah,--all the civilised nations in the world had been in the greatest
error and under the grossest delusion, respecting money and the metals it
is made of; that paper alone was useful and necessary; that we could not
do greater harm to our neighbours--jealous of our greatness and of our
advantages--than to send to them all our money and all our jewels; and
this idea was in no way concealed, for the Indian Company was allowed to
visit every house, even Royal houses, confiscate all the louis d'or, and
the coins it could find there; and to leave only pieces of twenty sous
and under (to the amount of not more than 200 francs), for the odd money
of bills, and in order to purchase necessary provisions of a minor kind,
with prohibitions, strengthened by heavy punishment, against keeping
more; so that everybody was obliged to take all the ready money he
possessed to the bank, for fear of its being discovered by a valet. But
nobody, as may be imagined, was persuaded of the justice of the power
accorded to the Company, and accordingly authority was more and more
exerted; all private houses were searched, informations were laid against
people in order that no money might be kept back, or if it were, that the
guilty parties might be severely punished.

Never before had sovereign power been so violently exercised, never had
it attacked in such a manner the temporal interests of the community.
Therefore was it by a prodigy, rather than by any effort or act of the
government, that these terribly new ordonnances failed to produce the
saddest and most complete revolutions; but there was not even talk of
them; and although there were so many millions of people, either
absolutely ruined or dying of hunger, and of the direst want, without
means to procure their daily subsistence, nothing more than complaints
and groans was heard.