in the center; to arouse public spirit, patriotic legends and emblems
surrounded it; to stimulate public cupidity, the amount of interest
which the note would yield each day to the holder was printed in the
margin; and the whole was duly garnished with stamps and signatures to
show that it was carefully registered and controlled.[8]

To crown its work the National Assembly, to explain the advantages of
this new currency, issued an address to the French people. In this
address it spoke of the nation as "delivered by this grand means from
all uncertainty and from all ruinous results of the credit system."
It foretold that this issue "would bring back into the public
treasury, into commerce and into all branches of industry strength,
abundance and prosperity."[9]

Some of the arguments in this address are worth recalling, and, among
them, the following:--"Paper money is without inherent value unless it
represents some special property. Without representing some special
property it is inadmissible in trade to compete with a metallic
currency, which has a value real and independent of the public action;
therefore it is that the paper money which has only the public
authority as its basis has always caused ruin where it has been
established; that is the reason why the bank notes of 1720, issued by
John Law, after having caused terrible evils, have left only frightful
memories. Therefore it is that the National Assembly has not wished
to expose you to this danger, but has given this new paper money not
only a value derived from the national authority but a value real and
immutable, a value which permits it to sustain advantageously a
competition with the precious metals themselves."[10]

But the final declaration was, perhaps, the most interesting. It was