F. Yes, like all other barren dreams formed to promote universal felicity. The extreme facility of the means which you recommend is quite sufficient to expose its hollowness. Do you believe that if it were merely needful to print bank-notes in order to satisfy all our wants, our tastes and desires, that mankind would have been contented to go on till now, without having recourse to this plan? I agree with you that the discovery is tempting. It would immediately banish from the world, not only plunder, in its diversified and deplorable forms, but even labour itself, except the Board of Assignats. But we have yet to learn how assignats are to purchase houses, which no one would have built; corn, which no one would have raised; stuffs, which no one would have taken the trouble to weave. B. One thing strikes me in your argument. You say yourself, that if there is no gain, at any rate there is no loss in multiplying the instrument of exchange, as is seen by the instance of the players, who were quits by a very mild deception. Why, then, refuse the philosopher's stone, which would teach us the secret of changing flints into gold, and, in the meantime, into paper money? Are you so blindly wedded to your logic, that you would refuse to try an experiment where there can be no risk? If you are mistaken, you are depriving the nation, as your numerous adversaries believe, of an immense advantage. If the error is on their side, no harm can result, as you yourself say, beyond the failure of a hope. The measure, excellent in their opinion, in yours is negative. Let it be tried, then, since the worst which can happen is not the realization of an evil, but the non-realization of a benefit. F. In the first place, the failure of a hope is a very great misfortune to any people. It is also very undesirable that the Government should announce the re-imposition of several taxes on the faith of a resource which must infallibly fail. Nevertheless, your remark would deserve some consideration, if, after the issue of paper money and its depreciation, the equilibrium of values should instantly and simultaneously take place, in all things and in every part of the country. The measure would tend, as in my example of the players, to a universal mystification, upon which the best thing we could do would be to look at one another and laugh. But this is not in the course of events. The experiment has been made, and every time a despot has altered the money ... B. Who says anything about altering the money?