¹ Registres de la Chambre syndicale de la Compagnie des Agens de Change de Paris (CSCAC), 24 March 1808, Centre des archives économiques et financières (CAEF), B-0069360/1.

² Bouchary, Jean, Les Boscary: Une famille d'agents de change sous l'Ancien Régime, la Révolution, le Consulat, l'Empire et la Restauration (Paris, 1942), 5–6 Google Scholar.

³ The year 1724 marked the establishment of the modern Paris Stock Exchange. Carine Romey observes that the edict creating the exchange also appeared to curtail the marché à terme, by requiring possession of both funds and securities before transacting. See Romey, Carine, “Les opérations de Bourse,” in Gallais-Hamonno, Georges and Hautcoeur, Pierre-Cyrille, eds., Le marché financier français au XIXe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris, 2007), 109–58Google Scholar, at 138. As John Shovlin has argued, this reproach of speculation fit into a wider discourse of “patriotic political economy,” which emerged with particular force in the latter half of the eighteenth century. See Shovlin, John, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 2006) 4–12 Google Scholar, 124–5, 170–72.

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⁶ Ibid., 717.

⁷ Munro, John H., “The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution: Usury, Rentes, and Negotiability,” International History Review, 25/3 (2003), 505–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 505–6. See also Hamilton, Earl J., “Origin and Growth of the National Debt in Western Europe,” American Economic Review, 37/2 (1947), 118–30Google Scholar.

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¹⁰ Lagneau-Ymonet, Paul and Riva, Angelo, Histoire de la Bourse de Paris (Paris, 2012), 16 Google Scholar.

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¹² Riley, James C., The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton, 1986), 191 Google Scholar. Riley estimates that between 1753 and 1764 the French public debt roughly doubled.

¹³ In 1770, Controller-General the Abbé Terray partially defaulted on the French public debt, which had to a large extent been composed of tontines, in which multiple lifetime annuities were grouped together into a single financial instrument. Terray converted these extant tontines into individualized lifetime annuities (rentes viagères). These individualized lifetime annuities became both the main element of the long-term public debt and a key object of speculative activity on the exchange. See Velde, François R. and Weir, David R., “The Financial Market and Government Debt Policy in France, 1746–1793,” Journal of Economic History, 52/1 (1992), 1–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 3; Weir, David R., “Tontines, Public Finance, and Revolution in France and England, 1688–1789,” Journal of Economic History, 49/1 (1989), 95–124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 121.

¹⁴ Taylor, “The Paris Bourse,” 956.

¹⁵ On the philosophical wrangling over the consequences of public debts for states see especially Sonenscher, Michael, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, 2007)Google Scholar; Hont, Istvan, “The Rhapsody of Public Debt: David Hume and Voluntary State Bankruptcy,” in Phillipson, Nicholas and Skinner, Quentin, eds., Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), 321–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the critique of Law's System as a critique of absolutism see Kaiser, Thomas E., “Money, Despotism, and Public Opinion in Early Eighteenth-Century France: John Law and the Debate on Royal Credit,” Journal of Modern History, 63/1 (1991), 1–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the entwinement of philosophical interpretations of financial speculation and politics at the level of the individual speculator see Darnton, Robert, George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (New York, 2003), 142–51Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Gontard, Maurice, La Bourse de Paris, (1800–1830) (Aix-en-Provence, 2000), 10 Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Taylor, “The Paris Bourse,” 957.

¹⁸ Lehmann, Paul-Jacques, Histoire de la Bourse de Paris (Paris, 1997), 11 Google Scholar. See also Gontard, La Bourse de Paris, 10–15.

¹⁹ Lagneau-Ymonet and Riva, Histoire de la Bourse, 21.

²⁰ Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 4.

²¹ Ibid., 7–8, 28–30, 249–51.

²² Ibid., 74–5.

²³ Ibid., 7–8, 256–7.

²⁴ Ibid., 66–7.

²⁵ Brewer, John, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xv. On the English “Financial Revolution” see Dickson, P. G. M., The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Carruthers, Bruce G., City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution (Princeton, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary French financial institutions see Bosher, J. F., French Finances, 1770–1795: From Business to Bureaucracy (New York, 1970)Google Scholar. In both England and France's case, the dramatic rise in public debts was tied to the state's war-making capacity. As Bossenga, “Financial Origins of the French Revolution,” 48, argues, “Had French finances simply been archaic, France would never have survived as a great power. France was continually adopting measures associated with capitalism and integrating them into its financial network up until the Revolution. Rather, the problem was that in an absolute monarchy lacking accountability financial capitalism was grafted onto privileged patrimonial structures: France modernized within traditional institutions.”

²⁶ Lagneau-Ymonet and Riva, Histoire de la Bourse, 21.

²⁷ Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 3.

²⁸ Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue, 212.

²⁹ Ibid., 219.

³⁰ Ibid., 218.

³¹ Forster, Robert, “The French Revolution and the ‘New’ Elite, 1800–1850,” in Pelenski, Jaroslaw, ed., The American and European Revolutions, 1776–1848: Sociopolitical and Ideological Aspects (Iowa City, 1980), 182–210 Google Scholar, at 188.

³² Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue, 151–9.

³³ Bruguière, Michel, “Le Tribun Ganilh et la liquidation de la dette publique par le Consulat,” in Pour une renaissance de l'histoire financière, XVIIe–XXe siècles (Paris, 1991), 97–102 Google Scholar, at 99–100.

³⁴ Jean Bouchary claims Baroud as the author of the pamphlet, as does a handwritten “Note historique” on the pamphlet itself. See Bouchary, Jean, Les manieurs d'argent à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1943), 3 Google Scholar: 179; anonymous, Considérations sur les avantages de l’éxistence d'une dette publique, et sur la nécessité d'un plan général et complete de bonne conduite en finance (Paris, 1800), 1, AN AF/IV/1086.

³⁵ Bouchary, Les manieurs, 167–74.

³⁶ In the last half of 1787 alone, the volume of Baroud's transactions reached as high as 63,000,000 livres. See Taylor, “The Paris Bourse,” 968.

³⁷ Darnton, George Washington's False Teeth, 149–50. See also Malick W. Ghachem, “At the Origins of Public Credit: A Story of Stock-Jobbing and Financial Crisis in Prerevolutionary France,” in “The Financial Crisis of 2008: French and American Responses,” Proceedings of the 2010 Franco-American Legal Seminar (2011), 171–82.

³⁸ Anonymous, Considérations, 1.

³⁹ Vührer, A., Histoire de la dette publique en France, 2 vols (Paris, 1886), 1 Google Scholar: 397. As one contemporary sniffed, “when one puts two-thirds of the debt to the sword, one might as well add the last third.” Camille Saint-Aubin, quoted in Marion, Marcel, Histoire financière de la France Depuis 1715, 4 vols. (Paris, 1914), 4 Google Scholar: 66.

⁴⁰ The tiers consolidé was a 5 percent perpetual annuity. See Lagneau-Ymonet and Riva, Histoire de la Bourse, 19–20. On the Bankruptcy of the Two-Thirds see Crouzet, François, La grande inflation: La monnaie en France de Louis XVI à Napoléon (Paris, 1993), 466–8Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Sédillot, Louis-Pierre-Eugène-Amélie, Manuel de la Bourse, 3rd edn (Paris, 1829), 3–4 Google Scholar.

⁴² Bergeron, Louis, France under Napoleon, trans. Palmer, R. R. (Princeton, 1981), 44–6Google Scholar; Peuchet, Jacques, Manuel du Banquier, de l'agent de change et du courtier (Paris, 1829), 78–83 Google Scholar. Napoleon's reorganization of the exchange, though it would undergo some modification, would remain largely intact for much of the nineteenth century.

⁴³ Anonymous, Considérations, 2–3. All emphasis original.

⁴⁴ Though the French state did attempt to amortize the loan, retiring portions of it from circulation. See Bruguière, Michel, “Les techniques d'intervention de la Caisse d'amortissement dans le cours de la rente, 1816–1824,” Revue historique, 258/1 (1977), 93–104 Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Anonymous, Considérations, 11, original emphasis.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 12.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 298–301, 306–7.

⁵⁰ Anonymous, Considérations, 2.

⁵¹ Ibid, 4.

⁵² The Old Regime French state defaulted on its debt in 1559, 1598, 1634, 1648, 1661, 1716, 1722, 1759, 1770, and 1788. See Bossenga, “Financial Origins of the French Revolution,” 38. The Revolutionary state continued this tradition with the Bankruptcy of the Two-Thirds in 1797.

⁵³ Anonymous, Considérations, 7.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 16, original emphasis.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 28–9.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 24.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 9–10.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 10–11.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 17.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 18.

⁶¹ Ibid., 25–6.

⁶² Ibid., 26.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 92–3.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 93–4.

⁶⁶ Anonymous, Lettre à l'auteur du mémoire intitulé: Considérations sur les avantages de l’éxistence d'une dette publique, et sur la nécessité d'un plan général et complet de bonne conduite en finance (Paris, 1800), 1, AN AF/IV/1086.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 3.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 11. The author mentioned Smith and Forbonnais in particular.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 2–3.

⁷¹ Ibid., 5–6.

⁷² Ibid., 22.

⁷³ Ibid., 4.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 20.

⁷⁵ Even the author of the Lettre never claimed that public debt was formally prohibited by law.

⁷⁶ Gontard, La Bourse de Paris, 23–4.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 24.

⁷⁸ Bordo, Michael D. and White, Eugene N., “A Tale of Two Currencies,” Journal of Economic History, 51/2 (1991), 303–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 303–6, 310; Crouzet, La grande inflation, 555–9. Britain's departure from the gold standard was by no means uncontroversial. See Poovey, Mary, Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England (Chicago, 2008), 171–218 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ Bordo and White, “A Tale of Two Currencies,” 310. The assignat was the Revolution's brief, and disastrous, experiment with paper currency. On the assignat see Crouzet, La grande inflation; Thomas M. Luckett, “Imaginary Currency and Real Guillotines: The Intellectual Origins of the Financial Terror in France,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 31/1 (2005), 117–39; Spang, Rebecca L., Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ Gontard, La Bourse de Paris, 25.

⁸¹ Reeve, Henry, “Mollien”, in Reeve, Royal and Republican France: A Series of Essays Reprinted from the ‘Edinburgh,’ ‘Quarterly,’ and ‘British and Foreign Review,’ 2 vols. (London, 1872), 1 Google Scholar: 355–421, at 361–3.

⁸² Ibid., 372–9.

⁸³ AN AF/IV/1089B.

⁸⁴ Mollien au Premier Consul, undated, AN AF/IV/1074. Given that the majority of new regulations on the exchange were issued between 1801 and 1802, it seems likely that the letter was composed sometime within that span.

⁸⁵ In canceling the marché à prime, the purchaser's losses would thus be limited to forfeiting the premium to the seller.

⁸⁶ de Frayne, L. Ch. Bizet, Précis des diverses manières de spéculer sur les fonds publics, en usage à la Bourse de Paris, 3rd edn (Paris, 1818), 4–5 Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Assuming gambling debts are promptly paid off, of course.

⁸⁸ Mollien au Premier Consul, AN AF/IV/1074.

⁸⁹ Or, at least, property was conceptually illimitable in the private domain. Disturbances of the public order would not, presumably, be justified according to the law of property.

⁹⁰ This new definition of property was quite close to the common-law concept Mollien cited; Article 544 defined property as “the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided one does not make usage prohibited by laws and regulations.” See Code Napoléon: Edition originale et seule officielle (Paris, 1807), 142.

⁹¹ Portalis, Jean-Etienne-Marie, “Exposé des motifs du projet du loi sur la propriété, Titre II, Livre II du Code civil, présenté le 26 nivôse an XII,” in Portalis, Frédéric, ed., Discours, rapports et travaux inédits sur le Code civil (Paris, 1844), 209–32Google Scholar, at 212.

⁹² Ibid., 214.

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 215.

⁹⁵ Titre V, Article 90, Code de commerce (Paris, 1807), 103. On the nature of the Commercial Code see Kessler, Amalia D., A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France (New Haven, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ CSCAC, 17 December 1807, CAEF B-0069360/1.

⁹⁷ Ibid.

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² Ibid.

¹⁰³ CSCAC, 5 March 1808, CAEF B-0069460/1.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid. The “Grand-Livre” was the ledger in which public debt transactions were recorded.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid.

¹⁰⁹ CSCAC, 5 March 1808, CAEF B-0069360/1.

¹¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹¹ Ibid.

¹¹² Ibid. Article 2059 of the Civil Code concerned fraud, specifically stellionate. See Code Napoléon, 527.

¹¹³ Gontard, La Bourse de Paris, 10–15.

¹¹⁴ CSCAC, 5 March 1808, CAEF B-0069360/1.

¹¹⁵ Desan, Suzanne, The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (Berkeley, 2004), 283–9Google Scholar. Desan notes that discussion of the code was focused in the Council of State, with Napoleon himself attending over half the sessions. However, the code “sailed through the two legislative bodies without difficulty or dispute.”

¹¹⁶ White, Eugene N., “The Paris Bourse, 1724–1814: Experiments in Microstructure,” in Engerman, Stanley L., Hoffman, Philip T., Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, and Sokoloff, Kenneth L., eds., Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (New York, 2003), 34–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 68. The Council of State and the prefect of police did weigh in on the exchange in 1809, with further regulations coming in 1819, 1826, 1830, and 1831. However, these regulations mainly dealt with the usurpation of professional office, trading hours, and admission to the exchange; the legality of the marché à terme did not seem to be an object of concern. See Archives de la préfecture de la police, DA/31.

¹¹⁷ Articles 421 and 422, Code pénal (Paris, 1810), 99.

¹¹⁸ On a similar controversy in the American context, see Levy, Jonathan Ira, “Contemplating Delivery: Futures Trading and the Problem of Commodity Exchange in the United States, 1875–1905,” American Historical Review, 111/2 (2006), 307–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.