obedience to a natural law, the former scarcity, or rather
_insufficiency_ of currency recurs just as soon as prices become
adjusted to the new volume, and there comes some little revival of
business with the usual increase of credit.[56]

In August, 1793, appeared a new report by Cambon. No one can read it
without being struck by its mingled ability and folly. His final plan
of dealing with the public debt has outlasted all revolutions since,
but his disposition of the inflated currency came to a wretched
failure. Against Du Pont, who showed conclusively that the wild
increase of paper money was leading straight to, ruin, Cambon carried
the majority in the great assemblies and clubs by sheer audacity--the
audacity of desperation. Zeal in supporting the _assignats_ became
his religion. The National Convention which succeeded the Legislative
Assembly, issued in 1793 over three thousand millions of _assignats_,
and, of these, over twelve hundred millions were poured into the
circulation. And yet Cambon steadily insisted that the security for
the _assignat_ currency was perfect. The climax of his zeal was
reached when he counted as assets in the national treasury the
indemnities which, he declared, France was sure to receive after
future victories over the allied nations with which she was then
waging a desperate war. As patriotism, it was sublime; as finance it
was deadly.[57]

Everything was tried. Very elaborately he devised a funding scheme
which, taken in connection with his system of issues, was in effect
what in these days would be called an "_interconvertibility scheme_"
By various degrees of persuasion or force,--the guillotine looming up
in the background,--holders of _assignats_ were urged to convert them
into evidence of national debt, bearing interest at five per cent,