How, then, can it force open the hands of its creditors, who have confidence in it, and then talk to them of public order and security of property?
The State, in such an operation, is not a debtor who discharges his debt; it is a stock-company which allures its stockholders into a trap, and there, contrary to its authentic promise, exacts from them twenty, thirty, or forty per cent.

of the interest on their capital.
That is not all.

The State is a university of citizens joined together under a common law by an act of society.

This act secures all in the possession of their property; guarantees to one his field, to another his vineyard, to a third his rents, and to the bondholder, who might have bought real estate but who preferred to come to the assistance of the treasury, his bonds.

The State cannot demand, without offering an equivalent, the sacrifice of an acre of the field or a corner of the vineyard; still less can it lower rents: why should it have the right to diminish the interest on bonds?
This right could not justly exist, unless the bondholder could invest his funds elsewhere to equal advantage; but being confined to the State, where can he find a place to invest them, since the cause of conversion, that is, the power to borrow to better advantage, lies in the State?
That is why a government, based on the principle of property, cannot redeem its annuities without the consent of their holders.
The money deposited with the republic is property which it has no right to touch while other kinds of property are respected; to force their redemption is to violate the social contract, and outlaw the bondholders.
The whole controversy as to the conversion of bonds finally reduces itself to this:-- QUESTION.