On the other hand Cazalès and Maury showed that the result could only
be disastrous. Never, perhaps, did a political prophecy meet with
more exact fulfillment in every line than the terrible picture drawn
in one of Cazalès' speeches in this debate. Still the current ran
stronger and stronger; Petion made a brilliant oration in favor of the
report, and Necker's influence and experience were gradually worn
away.

Mingled with the financial argument was a strong political plea. The
National Assembly had determined to confiscate the vast real property
of the French Church,--the pious accumulations of fifteen hundred
years. There were princely estates in the country, bishops' palaces
and conventual buildings in the towns; these formed between one-fourth
and one-third of the entire real property of France, and amounted in
value to at least two thousand million _livres_. By a few sweeping
strokes all this became the property of the nation. Never,
apparently, did a government secure a more solid basis for a great
financial future.[5]

There were two special reasons why French statesmen desired speedily
to sell these lands. First, a financial reason,--to obtain money to
relieve the government. Secondly, a political reason,--to get this
land distributed among the thrifty middle-classes, and so commit them
to the Revolution and to the government which gave their title.

It was urged, then, that the issue of four hundred millions of paper,
(not in the shape of interest-bearing bonds, as had at first been
proposed, but in notes small as well as large), would give the
treasury something to pay out immediately, and relieve the national
necessities; that, having been put into circulation, this paper money