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 the _mandats_ had refuted his entire argument. [73] The old plan of penal measures was again pressed. Monot led off by proposing penalties against those who shall speak publicly against the _mandats_; Talot thought the penalties ought to be made especially severe; and finally it was enacted that any persons "who by their discourse or writing shall decry the _mandats_ shall be condemned to a fine of not less than one thousand _francs_ or more than ten thousand; and in case of a repetition of the offence, to four years in irons." It was also decreed that those who refused to receive the _mandats_ should be fined,--the first time, the exact sum which they refuse; the second time, ten times as much; and the third time, punished with two years in prison. But here, too, came in the action of those natural laws which are alike inexorable in all countries. This attempt proved futile in France just as it had proved futile less than twenty years before in America. No enactments could stop the downward tendency of this new paper "fully secured," "as good as gold"; the laws that finally govern finance are not made in conventions or congresses. [74]