country at large, resulting from the sudden building up of
ostentatious wealth in a few large cities, and from the gambling,
speculative spirit spreading from these to the small towns and rural
districts. From this was developed an even more disgraceful
result,--the decay of a true sense of national good faith. The
patriotism which the fear of the absolute monarchy, the machinations
of the court party, the menaces of the army and the threats of all
monarchical Europe had been unable to shake was gradually
disintegrated by this same speculative, stock-jobbing habit fostered
by the superabundant currency. At the outset, in the discussions
preliminary to the first issue of paper money, Mirabeau and others who
had favored it had insisted that patriotism as well as an enlightened
self-interest, would lead the people to keep up the value of paper
money. The very opposite of this was now revealed, for there
appeared, as another outgrowth of this disease, what has always been
seen under similar circumstances. It is a result of previous, and a
cause of future evils. This outgrowth was a vast debtor class in the
nation, directly interested in the depreciation of the currency in
which they were to pay their debts. The nucleus of this class was
formed by those who had purchased the church lands from the
government. Only small payments down had been required and the
remainder was to be paid in deferred installments: an indebtedness of
a multitude of people had thus been created to the amount of hundreds
of millions. This body of debtors soon saw, of course, that their
interest was to depreciate the currency in which their debts were to
be paid; and these were speedily joined by a far more influential
class;--by that class whose speculative tendencies had been stimulated
by the abundance of paper money, and who had gone largely into debt,
looking for a rise in nominal values. Soon demagogues of the viler
sort in the political clubs began to pander to it; a little later