29.6. 6. The Laws which appear the same have not always the same Effect.
Csar made a law to prohibit people from keeping above sixty sesterces in
their houses.
[5]
This law was considered at Rome as extremely proper for reconciling the
debtors to their creditors, because, by obliging the
rich to lend to the poor, they enabled the latter to pay their debts. A
law of the same nature made in France at the time of the System proved
extremely fatal, because it was enacted under a most frightful
situation. After depriving people of all possible means of laying out
their money, they stripped them even of the last resource of keeping it
at home, which was the same as taking it from them by open violence.
Csar's law was intended to make the money circulate; the French
minister's design was to draw all the money into one hand. The former
gave either lands or mortgages on private people for the money; the
latter proposed in lieu of money nothing but effects which were of no
value, and could have none by their very nature, because the law
compelled people to accept of them.
Footnotes
