Besides, if they amount to a few thousands of
millions more, I declare that it is my intention that they should be
entirely paid off, and that a project so laudable should not remain
unexecuted for a trifle more or less.'[1]
M. Ricard, it will be observed, must have drawn his will while royalty
was in the ascendant; it was registered during the Reign of Terror,
and one would be curious to know how many weeks, instead of centuries,
his 500 livres remained sacred. Money in the most steadily-governed
states--in our own, for instance--is subject to continual casualties.
The most acute men of business cannot command perfectly certain
investments for their own money--they are often miserably deceived,
and suffer heavy losses. M. Ricard, however, supposed that a set of
irresponsible trustees would for centuries always discover perfectly
sure investments, and act with consummate watchfulness and honesty. If
it were possible to leave behind one money with the qualification of
always being securely invested, while the rest of the property in the
world remained insecure, it would gradually suck all the wealth of the
world into its vortex. But it would require supernatural agency to
make it thus absolutely secure.
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