Recollect the solicitude of the Belgians on that subject. With what
earnestness did they conjure you to take off a retroactive effect from
these assignats, and to prevent them from being applied to the payment
of debts that were contracted anterior to the union!
Did not this language energetically enough signify that they looked
upon the assignats as a leprosy, and the union as a deadly contagion?
And yet what regard was paid to so just a demand? It was buried in the
Committee of Finance. That committee wanted to make anarchy the means of
an union. They only busied themselves in making the Belgic Provinces
subservient to their finances.
Cambon said loftily before the Belgians themselves: The Belgian war
costs us hundreds of millions. Their ordinary revenues, and even some
extraordinary taxes, will not answer to our reimbursements; and yet we
have occasion for them. The mortgage of our assignats draws near its
end. What must be done? Sell the Church property of Brabant. There is a
mortgage of two thousand millions (eighty millions sterling). How shall
we get possession of them? By an immediate union. Instantly they decreed
this union. Men's minds were not disposed to it. What does it signify?
Let us make them vote by means of money. Without delay, therefore, they
secretly order the Minister of Foreign Affairs to dispose of four or
five hundred thousand livres (20,000_l._ sterling) _to make the
vagabonds of Brussels drunk, and to buy proselytes to the union in all
the States_.
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