It is worth while to follow for a little the history of the Assignats, for they afterwards became one of the most characteristic and disastrous features of Revolutionary finance. The intention of their authors had been to use the Assignats as a temporary convenience, to tide over the many pressing difficulties of the moment, until the State could find time to face and to settle the question of its finances. In that idea, had it been rigidly adhered to, there was nothing economically wrong. But from the first, the plan proved disappointing. The sale of the Church lands brought in comparatively little. The municipalities naturally considered their own interests first, and did not always sell the lands in the manner most profitable to the State. They permitted the buyer to take possession on payment of a very small instalment of the price; and in many cases speculators, taking advantage of this system, bought Church land largely, then cut down the timber and pulled down the houses on it, and having made what profit they could, decamped before the second instalment became due. In the existing state of the administration, it was not difficult to play tricks with the law. Moreover, purchasers of these lands were permitted to pay for them in Assignats, the idea being that all the paper money issued would thus return into the Exchequer, and pass out of circulation as the Church lands were sold off. The fact, however, that the Assignats were accepted by the municipalities at their nominal value made it the object of speculators to depreciate them, and thus from the first a powerful motive was at work to depreciate the new currency. The consequence was, that within a few months of the first issue of Assignats, the embarrassments of the State were as pressing as ever. The Assignats already issued had been spent, and the Assembly, as far as ever from financial order, could only suggest the issuing of more. Then again Mirabeau, aware of the dangers of his course, but still struggling to avert bankruptcy, and hoping for a change of Ministry which might ultimately set matters right, threw his influence into the same scale. In September, 1790, he induced the Assembly to sanction a final issue of eight hundred millions more, towards the liquidation of the National Debt; to enact that more than twelve hundred millions should never be put into circulation, and to provide that all Assignats paid into the Treasury thenceforward should be burned.