Of the Misery of Paper Currencies
to the Moment of Truth
Appeal by the central administration in Carinthia of April 22, 1797, to the “citizens and inhabitants of the country of Carinthia” concerning the need of cover for the bonds circulating in the country. No place + printer. (1797). Sm. fol. 3 pp. With printed signature by Franz Count of Enzenberg.
Broadsheet intended daily use and accordingly rare
regarding the dramatic depreciation in value of the bonds issued by banks instead of cash as a special form of banknotes due to the turmoil of war. Which already “a considerable time before the marching in of the French army … reduced (the) circulation of cash substantially, and most payments were done with the so-called bonds … (as one) effect of the grown discredit for these bonds which one wants to get rid of while laying by the cash for coming cases and in the end tried to take with out of the country. The spirit of speculation … did its best to disparage the bonds from the dignity of a representing coin to an article of commerce.”.
Sentimentally wrapped thus the appeal to the citizens’ patriotism to prefinance the “foundation of a bonds dissolution fund” by changing cash to, at first, “insurance bonds”, later than “for true bonds or (again) cash, too”. But those who nevertheless resist to be put to the patriotic way, for those “unfeeling egotists … the ways of most shameful enrichment they pursued (would be) turned into ways of impoverishment”. Only by lawful means of course. Thus just as 200 years later those dispossessed forty years before by then so-called totalitarian rulers remain dispossessed as comparable lepers by a now democratic constitutional state – and not least to its advantage.
Contemporary registration no. + receipt paraph on page 1 and the white fourth page resp. The almost torn asunder center fold backed acid-freely. Otherwise on untrimmed wide-margined laid paper.
Offer no. 13,072 / EUR 101. (c. US$ 143.) + shipping
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