“The claims of the _Caisse d’Escompte_ are not less sacred than those of others, I grant, but neither are they more so. I will not, therefore, recommend you to create paper-money for the other creditors, as well as for the _Caisse_, but I would conjure you not to create it at all. The inevitable effect of all paper-money is, as you know, the rapid disappearance of cash. The fictitious currency drives away the real; and as the former can never be a perfectly exact representation of the latter, it happens that it drives away far more than it replaces. From that moment the paper no longer maintains an equality with cash; it falls below par, and hence the most fatal consequences. All the creditors who receive payment in notes lose the difference, while, on the other hand, all the debtors to whom cash had been advanced, gain the difference, and hence arise a destruction of property and a general want of faith in payments—a want of faith the more odious as it has the sanction of legality. Moreover, as soon as one set of engagements between individuals is settled, fresh ones will be formed, or there would be an end of all business transactions; and here recommences, in an opposite direction, an operation no less fatal, no less convulsive, by which the creditors, in their turn, will ruin the debtors. Fearing a repayment in notes, and adding by anticipation the present loss upon those notes to the still greater loss which they expect may afterwards be incurred, they swell out their claims to an unreasonable extent. Thus they entail the ruin of their debtors when the time arrives at which there shall be no more notes, or when confidence shall have brought them to an equality with cash. It is evident that this is not a reparation of the injustice first alluded to, but an entirely new species of injustice, inasmuch as there is neither the same proportion, nor the same contracting parties, nor the same engagements.” * * * * * “The more we reflect on the true principles of credit, the more are we convinced that there exists in this respect no difference between a nation and a private individual. A nation, like a private person, possesses credit only so long as it is known to have the will and the power to pay. A nation, like an individual, can do nothing better towards its creditors than to pay in ready money its engagements when due. If, through some unfortunate circumstances, the means of payment in cash are wanting, the best—the only course which a nation, like an individual, can then adopt, is to propose to its creditors only such arrangements as are secure of being carried into effect, for nothing destroys confidence like exaggerated promises.” * * * * *