established in regard to the purchase of lands with _assignats_.

Perhaps the most whimsical thing in the whole situation was the fact
that the government, pressed as it was by demands of all sorts,
continued to issue the old _assignats_ at the same time that it was
discrediting them by issuing the new _mandats_. And yet in order to
make the _mandats_ "as good as gold" it was planned by forced loans
and other means to reduce the quantity of _assignats_ in circulation,
so that the value of each _assignat_ should be raised to one-thirtieth
of the value of gold, then to make _mandats_ legal tender and to
substitute them for _assignats_ at the rate of one for thirty. Never
were great expectations more cruelly disappointed. Even before the
_mandats_ could be issued from the press they fell to thirty-five per
cent of their nominal value; from this they speedily fell to fifteen,
and soon after to five per cent, and finally, in August, 1796, six
months from their first issue, to three per cent. This plan
failed--just as it failed in New England in 1737; just as it failed
under our own Confederation in 1781; just as it failed under the
Southern Confederacy during our Civil War.[72]

To sustain this new currency the government resorted to every method
that ingenuity could devise. Pamphlets suited to people of every
capacity were published explaining its advantages. Never was there
more skillful puffing. A pamphlet signed "Marchant" and dedicated to
"People of Good Faith" was widely circulated, in which Marchant took
pains to show the great advantage of the _mandats_ as compared with
_assignats_,--how land could be more easily acquired with them; how
their security was better than with _assignats_; how they could not,
by any possibility, sink in values as the _assignats_ had done. But
even before the pamphlet was dry from the press the depreciation of