the enormous demands on France during the first years of the
Revolution had been stated by a true statesman and sound financier, Du
Pont de Nemours, at the very beginning. He had shown that using the
same paper as a circulating medium and as a means for selling the
national real estate was like using the same implement for an oyster
knife and a razor.[54]

It has been argued that the _assignats_ sank in value because they
were not well secured,--that securing them on government real estate
was as futile as if the United States had, in the financial troubles
of its early days, secured notes on its real estate. This objection
is utterly fallacious. The government lands of our country were
remote from the centers of capital and difficult to examine; the
French national real estate was near these centers--even _in_
them--and easy to examine. Our national real estate was unimproved
and unproductive; theirs was improved and productive--its average
productiveness in market in ordinary times being from four to five per
cent.[55]

It has also been objected that the attempt to secure the _assignats_
on government real estate failed because of the general want of
confidence in the title derived by the purchasers from the new
government. Every thorough student of that period must know that this
is a misleading statement. Everything shows that the vast majority of
the French people had a fanatical confidence in the stability of the
new government during the greater part of the Revolution. There were
disbelievers in the security of the _assignats_ just as there were
disbelievers in the paper money of the United States throughout our
Civil War; but they were usually a small minority. Even granting that
there was a doubt as to investment in French lands, the French people