In 1811, the Austrian ~Finanzpatent~ reduced these 4000 florins to one-fifth [the reference being to Beethoven’s annuity]; [and in 1860]: How severely our composer was hit by it is seen in the circumstance that also all contracts which had to do with paper money were reduced to one-fifth of the specified sum. In accordance with this Beethoven’s annuity of 4000 florins in bank-notes became subject to reduction. It was reduced to 800 florins in paper money. An error of some kind must be here involved. This seems so obvious and palpable, as to render it hardly credible that, in all the long years since 1840, it has not caught the attention of some one writer on Beethoven and induced him to cast his eye for a moment upon the Patent itself. The depreciation of a national paper currency to null and its subsequent repudiation by the Government that emitted it is, in effect, a domestic forced loan equal in amount to the sum issued; and the more gradual its depreciation, so much the more likely is the public burden to be general and in some degree equalized. Such a forced loan was the “Continental Currency” issued by the American Congress to sustain the war against England in 1775-83; and such were the French “Assignats” a few years later; and such, to the amount of 80 ~per centum~ of all the paper in circulation, was the substitution of notes of redemption for the bank-notes at the rate of one for five, by the Austrian ~Finanz-Patent~, promulgated February 20th, and put in force March 15th, 1811. But if Schindler be correct, the Imperial Royal Government went farther and committed the folly and injustice--with little or no advantage to itself--of issuing and enforcing a decree which, in its effect, simply confiscated 80 ~per centum~ of all domestic indebtedness--where the payment in specie or its equivalent was not stipulated--to the gain of the debtor and the loss of the creditor! According to more modern ideas of national economy, those ordinances of the ~Finanz-Patent~ of February 20, which relate to “continuing, periodically recurring payments of interest, incomes, farm-rents, pensions, maintenance moneys, annuities, etc.,” were certainly unwise and uncalled-for; but they involved no such blunder as that. The Government assumed that every contract of pecuniary obligation between Austrian subjects, wherein special payment or its equivalent was not stipulated, was payable in bank-notes; and that the real indebtedness under any such contract was in justice and equity to be determined and measured by the value in silver of the bank-notes at the date of the instrument. This second proposition is fallacious and deceptive, because such contracts rested upon the necessary presumptions that the faith and honor of the supreme authority were pledged to the future redemption of its paper at par and that the pledge would be redeemed. But this was not seen or was not regarded. Consequently, there was