with the understanding that if more paper were afterward needed more
would be issued. All in vain. The official tables of depreciation
show that the _assignats_ continued to fall. A forced loan, calling
in a billion of these, checked this fall, but only for a moment. The
"_interconvertibility scheme_" between currency and bonds failed as
dismally as the "_interconvertibility scheme_" between currency and
land had failed.[58]

A more effective expedient was a law confiscating the property of all
Frenchmen who left France after July 14, 1789, and who had not
returned. This gave new land to be mortgaged for the security of
paper money.

All this vast chapter in financial folly is sometimes referred to as
if it resulted from the direct action of men utterly unskilled in
finance. This is a grave error. That wild schemers and dreamers took
a leading part in setting the fiat money system going is true; that
speculation and interested financiers made it worse is also true: but
the men who had charge of French finance during the Reign of Terror
and who made these experiments, which seem to us so monstrous, in
order to rescue themselves and their country from the flood which was
sweeping everything to financial ruin were universally recognized as
among the most skillful and honest financiers in Europe. Cambon,
especially, ranked then and ranks now as among the most expert in any
period. The disastrous results of all his courage and ability in the
attempt to stand against the deluge of paper money show how powerless
are the most skillful masters of finance to stem the tide of fiat
money calamity when once it is fairly under headway; and how useless
are all enactments which they can devise against the underlying laws
of nature.