The service of the State was made a pretext to destroy the Church.  In their way to the destruction of the Church they would not scruple to destroy their country:  and they have destroyed it.  One great end in the project would have been defeated, if the plan of extortion had been adopted in lieu of the scheme of confiscation.  The new landed interest connected with the new republic, and connected with it for its very being, could not have been created.  This was among the reasons why that extravagant ransom was not accepted.

The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan that was first pretended, soon became apparent.  To bring this unwieldy mass of landed property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast landed domain of the crown, at once into market was obviously to defeat the profits proposed by the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands, and indeed of all the landed estates throughout France.  Such a sudden diversion of all its circulating money from trade to land must be an additional mischief.  What step was taken?  Did the Assembly, on becoming sensible of the inevitable ill effects of their projected sale, revert to the offers of the clergy?  No distress could oblige them to travel in a course which was disgraced by any appearance of justice.  Giving over all hopes from a general immediate sale, another project seems to have succeeded.  They proposed to take stock in exchange for the Church lands.  In that project great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be exchanged.  Other obstacles also presented themselves, which threw them back again upon some project of sale.  The municipalities had taken an alarm.  They would not hear of transferring the whole plunder of the kingdom to the stockholders in Paris.  Many of those municipalities had been (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indigence.  Money was nowhere to be seen.  They were therefore led to the point that was so ardently desired.  They panted for a currency of any kind which might revive their perishing industry.  The municipalities were, then, to be admitted to a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the first scheme (if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether impracticable.  Public exigencies pressed upon all sides.  The Minister of Finance reiterated his call for supply with, a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice.  Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent, creating a new paper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands.  They issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands made upon them by the bank of discount, the great machine or paper-mill of their fictitious wealth.