_assignats_ were not at par because there were not yet enough of them;
he insisted that payments for public lands be received in _assignats_
alone; and suggested that the church bells of the kingdom be melted
down into small money. Le Brun attacked the whole scheme in the
Assembly, as he had done in the Committee, declaring that the
proposal, instead of relieving the nation, would wreck it. The papers
of the time very significantly say that at this there arose many
murmurs. Chabroud came to the rescue. He said that the issue of
_assignats_ would relieve the distress of the people and he presented
very neatly the new theory of paper money and its basis in the
following words: "The earth is the source of value; you cannot
distribute the earth in a circulating value, but this paper becomes
representative of that value and it is evident that the creditors of
the nation will not be injured by taking it." On the other hand,
appeared in the leading paper, the "Moniteur," a very thoughtful
article against paper money, which sums up all by saying, "It is,
then, evident that all paper which cannot, at the will of the bearer,
be converted into specie cannot discharge the functions of money."
This article goes on to cite Mirabeau's former opinion in his letter
to Cerutti, published in 1789,--the famous opinion of paper money as
"a nursery of tyranny, corruption and delusion; a veritable debauch of
authority in delirium." Lablache, in the Assembly, quoted a saying
that "paper money is the emetic of great states."[20]

Boutidoux, resorting to phrasemaking, called the _assignats_ _"un
papier terre,"_ or "land converted into paper." Boislandry answered
vigorously and foretold evil results. Pamphlets continued to be
issued,--among them, one so pungent that it was brought into the
Assembly and read there,--the truth which it presented with great
clearness being simply that doubling the quantity of money or