employees and men of small means, whose property was not large enough
to invest in stores of goods or national lands.[69] Financiers and men
of large means were shrewd enough to put as much of their property as
possible into objects of permanent value. The working classes had no
such foresight or skill or means. On them finally came the great
crushing weight of the loss. After the first collapse came up the
cries of the starving. Roads and bridges were neglected; many
manufactures were given up in utter helplessness." To continue, in
the words of the historian already cited: "None felt any confidence in
the future in any respect; few dared to make a business investment for
any length of time and it was accounted a folly to curtail the
pleasures of the moment, to accumulate or save for so uncertain a
future."[70]

This system in finance was accompanied by a system in politics no less
startling, and each system tended to aggravate the other. The wild
radicals, having sent to the guillotine first all the Royalists and
next all the leading Republicans they could entrap, the various
factions began sending each other to the same
destination:--Hébertists, Dantonists, with various other factions and
groups, and, finally, the Robespierrists, followed each other in rapid
succession. After these declaimers and phrase-mongers had thus
disappeared there came to power, in October, 1795, a new
government,--mainly a survival of the more scoundrelly,--the
Directory. It found the country utterly impoverished and its only
resource at first was to print more paper and to issue even while wet
from the press. These new issues were made at last by the two great
committees, with or without warrant of law, and in greater sums than
ever. Complaints were made that the array of engravers and printers
at the mint could not meet the demand for _assignats_--that they could