It is impossible that M. Necker should be mistaken in the amount of the bullion which has been coined in the mint.  It is a matter of official record.  The reasonings of this able financier concerning the quantity of gold and silver which remained for circulation, when he wrote in 1785, that is, about four years before the deposition and imprisonment of the French king, are not of equal certainty; but they are laid on grounds so apparently solid, that it is not easy to refuse a considerable degree of assent to his calculation.  He calculates the numeraire, or what we call specie, then actually existing in France, at about eighty-eight millions of the same English money.  A great accumulation of wealth for one country, large as that country is!  M. Necker was so far from considering this influx of wealth as likely to cease, when he wrote in 1785, that he presumes upon a future annual increase of two per cent upon the money brought into France during the periods from which he computed.

Some adequate cause must have originally introduced all the money coined at its mint into that kingdom; and some cause as operative must have kept at home, or returned into its bosom, such a vast flood of treasure as M. Necker calculates to remain for domestic circulation.  Suppose any reasonable deductions from M. Necker’s computation, the remainder must still amount to an immense sum.  Causes thus powerful to acquire and to retain cannot be found in discouraged industry, insecure property, and a positively destructive government.  Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of France, the multitude and opulence of her cities, the useful magnificence of her spacious high-roads and bridges, the opportunity of her artificial canals and navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a solid continent of so immense an extent,—­when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of her ports and harbors, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war or trade,—­when I bring before my view the number of her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies upon every side,—­when I recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is without cultivation, and to what complete perfection the culture of many of the best productions of the earth have been brought in France,—­when I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to none but ours, and in some particulars not second,—­when I contemplate the grand foundations of charity, public and private,—­when I survey the state of all the arts that beautify and polish life,—­when I reckon the men she has bled for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude of her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her critics, her historians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred and profane,—­I behold in