cash, our merchants make a difference from five to ten per cent. between
purchasing for specie or paying in bank-notes; and this mistrust will not
be lessened hereafter. You may, perhaps, object that, as long as the
bank pays, it is absurd for any one possessing its bills to pay dearer
than with cash, which might so easily be obtained. This objection would
stand with regard to your, or any other free country, but here, where no
payments are made in gold, but always in silver or copper, it requires a
cart to carry away forty, thirty, or twenty thousand livres, in coin of
these metals, and would immediately excite suspicion that a bearer of
these bills was an emissary of our enemies, or an enemy of our
Government. With us, unfortunately, suspicion is the same as conviction,
and chastisement follows it as its shadow.

A manufacturer of the name of Debrais, established in the Rue St. Martin,
where he had for years carried on business in the woollen line, went to
the bank two days after it had begun to pay. He demanded, and obtained,
exchange for twenty-four thousand livres--in notes, necessary for him to
pay what was due by him to his workmen. The same afternoon six of our
custom-house officers, accompanied by police agents and gendarmes, paid
him a domiciliary visit under pretence of searching for English goods.
Several bales were seized as being of that description, and Debrais was
carried a prisoner to La Force. On being examined by Fouche, he offered
to prove, by the very men who had fabricated the suspected goods, that
they were not English. The Minister silenced him by saying that
Government had not only evidence of the contrary, but was convinced that
he was employed as an English agent to hurt the credit of the bank, and
therefore, if he did not give up his accomplices or employers, had
condemned him to transportation. In vain did his wife and daughters
petition to Madame Bonaparte; Debrais is now at Rochefort, if not already
embarked for our colonies.