"Of course gold will drain off abroad--if the foreigners don't follow in our footsteps at once. If the demonetised gold is withdrawn--well, we can have a new currency by nationalising the railways and paying the shareholders 'in current coin'" (which means in unconvertible notes), "not in redeemable, interest-bearing bonds. So long as solid wealth rests behind our issue, our financial policy is sound. Of course, the railway and other shareholders will want fresh investments; they won't find them, because no man will pay interest to usurers when he can monetise his credit at the mere cost of banking and exchange. They must therefore spend it, and the currency will never be restricted henceforward. And this national ownership of exchange can be operated to compel every monopolist to sell his monopoly to the nation."[762] This insane project is called by the writer, "A scientific way to Socialism."[763] Surely science is the most abused word in modern language. The creation of money by unlimited issues of paper secured by the national possessions was tried on the grandest scale at the French Revolution. The "assignats" were secured on the national domains, and their security seemed absolute to the revolutionaries. The great Mirabeau had stated on September 27, 1790: "Our assignats are not ordinary paper money. They are a new creation for which there is no precedent. What constitutes the value of metal money? Its intrinsic value. Now I ask you: Does paper which represents the foremost of the possessions of a nation such as France not possess all the characteristics of intrinsic and generally accepted value which metal money possesses?"[764] The "assignats" speedily fell to a discount, although dealing in them at a discount was made punishable with twenty years' imprisonment with hard labour,[765] and they fell ultimately to waste-paper value. A pair of boots worth thirty francs in gold cost 10,000 francs in paper. On paper all were immensely rich. Yet the masses were starving. Unfortunately people cannot live by consuming unlimited quantities of credit notes. They can become prosperous neither by robbing the rich nor by calling a shilling a sovereign, but only by producing more. Greater wealth means simply increased consumption, and increased consumption, unless based on increased production, can only be effected by intrenching upon and diminishing the national capital, the national reserve store of food, clothing, tools, &c., and thus causing widespread misery and starvation. FOOTNOTES: [751] Bebel, _Woman in the Past, Present, and Future_, p. 192. [752] Leatham, _Socialism and Character_, p. 90. [753] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 100. [754] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 103. [755] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 157. [756] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 14. [757] Jowett, _The Socialist and the City_, p. 44. [758] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 57.