State Contention—Dollars and Sense. 259' 
perity—her treasury is full—she has had no “ strikes ”—no mur¬ 
murs, and no pauperism among the able-bodied. How did France 
accomplish all this? By specie payments? No! She accomplish¬ 
ed it all by the almost unlimited use of legal tenders, which she has 
kept substantially at par by receiving them for all dues and paying 
them for all debts, save the indemnity to Prussia. Victor Bonnet, 
a French writer of note, and a bullionist, withal, has written two j 
essa} r s on the subject, and I cannot do better than to introduce the 
facts to you in his own language: 
“ What has taken place in France since the war, in relation to the 
paper circulation, which is taking place to-day, is a very curious 
phenomenon, and is in danger of being seriously misconstrued. It 
apparently reverses the economical and financial principles which 
the best authors on the subject have labored to establish. They 
have cautioned us against issuing too much paper money, having 
the quality of legal tender, holding that the volume of such paper 
should be very carefully limited, lest confidence in it should become 
impaired, and depreciation follow. Now, it so happened that, al¬ 
most at a single step, in the midst of our disasters, we issued more 
than 1,800,000,000 francs of new notes; and that this legal-tender 
paper has kept itself at par—the only time when it fell below par, 
being upon the payment of the first installment of the indemnity 
to Germany. At that time, gold commanded a premium of two 
and one-half per cent., and singular as it may seem, the 'price fell as 
soon as authority was given to issue bank-notes in excess of the 
previous limit of 2,400,000,000 francs. In November, 1871, the 
note issue of the bank of France, had reached only 2,300,000,000 
francs, and the premium was two and one-half per cent. By the 
end of January, 1872, they exceeded 2,450,000,000 francs, and gold 
had fallen to one per cent. A short time afterward, the limit of 
circulation was extended to 3,200,000,000 francs, and no further at¬ 
tention was paid to it; the premium on gold had become insignifi¬ 
cant!” 
The writer then goes on to saj r , by way of a contrast of facts, in 
speaking of the payment of the Prussian indemnity: “It would 
seem, that if we, the debtors, have been able to acquit ourselves of 
the debt thus easily, the creditor who has received our money, 
ought to have profited by it largely, and at once! But, in fact, ex¬ 
actly the contrary has happened. We have paid over 5,000,000,000 
