Month after month, year after year new issues went on. Meanwhile
everything possible was done to keep up the value of paper. The city
authorities of Metz took a solemn oath that the _assignats_ should
bear the same price whether in paper or specie,--and whether in buying
or selling, and various other official bodies throughout the nation
followed this example. In obedience to those who believed with the
market women of Paris, as stated in their famous petition, that "laws
should be passed making paper money as good as gold," Couthon, in
August, 1793, had proposed and carried a law punishing any person who
should sell _assignats_ at less than their nominal value with
imprisonment for twenty years in chains, and later carried a law
making investments in foreign countries by Frenchmen punishable with
death.[59]

But to the surprise of the great majority of the French people, the
value of the _assignats_ was found, after the momentary spasm of fear
had passed, not to have been permanently increased by these measures:
on the contrary, this "fiat" paper persisted in obeying the natural
laws of finance and, as new issues increased, their value decreased.
Nor did the most lavish aid of nature avail. The paper money of the
nation seemed to possess a magic power to transmute prosperity into
adversity and plenty into famine. The year 1794 was exceptionally
fruitful: and yet with the autumn came scarcity of provisions and with
the winter came distress. The reason is perfectly simple. The
sequences in that whole history are absolutely logical. First, the
Assembly had inflated the currency and raised prices enormously.
Next, it had been forced to establish an arbitrary maximum price for
produce. But this price, large as it seemed, soon fell below the real
value of produce; many of the farmers, therefore, raised less produce