sneered ominously at public creditors as "rich people, old financiers
and bankers." Soon payment was suspended on dues to public creditors
for all amounts exceeding ten thousand _francs_.

This was hailed by many as a measure in the interests of the poorer
classes of people, but the result was that it injured them most of
all. Henceforward, until the end of this history, capital was quietly
taken from labor and locked up in all the ways that financial
ingenuity could devise. All that saved thousands of laborers in
France from starvation was that they were drafted off into the army
and sent to be killed on foreign battlefields.

On the last day of July, 1792, came another brilliant re- port from
Fouquet, showing that the total amount of currency already issued was
about twenty-four hundred millions, but claiming that the national
lands were worth a little more than this sum. A decree was now passed
issuing three hundred millions more. By this the prices of everything
were again enhanced save one thing, and that one thing was labor.
Strange as it may at first appear, while the depreciation of the
currency had raised all products enormously in price, the stoppage of
so many manufactories and the withdrawal of capital caused wages in
the summer of 1792, after all the inflation, to be as small as they
had been four years before--viz., fifteen _sous_ per day. No more
striking example can be seen of the truth uttered by Daniel Webster,
that "of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of
mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them
with paper-money."[41]

Issue after issue followed at intervals of a few months, until, on
December 14, 1792, we have an official statement to the effect that