was no shortage of reasons undergirding opposition to the mobilization and monetization of land values. Perhaps the most intriguing were those that rejected monetization on the basis of the inadequacy of land itself. The debates surrounding the mortgage question reveal remarkably little consensus on the reliability of land as a source of value. Deputy Léon Faucher expressed the extreme position on this issue in 1848: Land is far from the best security. In fact, on its own it is no kind of security at all. It may have been reasonable to think of it as the definitive security when the origin of value was little understood, when we didn’t grasp the nature of production. But today […] what is it that produces? Is it the earth? No! It’s labour. […] Land is worth as much as the man who works it is worth. In a similar statement that seemed an outright rejection the Physiocratic truism of the productivity of land, the Ministry of Finance expressed skepticism over the viability of a market for mortgage instruments because with mortgages, unlike or public debt, rentes sur l’Etat “the opportunity for an increase of one’s capital is nonexistent.” Even if land could produce value, the conditions that would make this value evident and credible to observers were lacking. As several courts consulted in the 1841 legal consultation pointed out, a tradesman enjoyed credit because his transactions were on daily appeals to “based mutual trust, on the incessant surveillance of public opinion and the sanctions that follow any lack of good faith.” This personal network supplied the instruments he inscribed with a reliable face value. In contrast, mortgage’s security cannot be deduced from a glance at a title;” “a moreover, property owner’s transactions are few and secret […] nothing regulates the level of “a trust he should be accorded.” Indeed, Faucher based his opposition to paper mortgage money in 1848 precisely on what he saw as the wrong-headedness of replacing bills representing “a metallic value, a definitive and universal means of exchange” with bills representing “landed
was no shortage of reasons undergirding opposition to the mobilization and monetization of land values. Perhaps the most intriguing were those that rejected monetization on the basis of the inadequacy of land itself. The debates surrounding the mortgage question reveal remarkably little consensus on the reliability of land as a source of value. Deputy Léon Faucher expressed the extreme position on this issue in 1848: Land is far from the best security. In fact, on its own it is no kind of security at all. It may have been reasonable to think of it as the definitive security when the origin of value was little understood, when we didn’t grasp the nature of production. But today […] what is it that produces? Is it the earth? No! It’s labour. […] Land is worth as much as the man who works it is worth. In a similar statement that seemed an outright rejection the Physiocratic truism of the productivity of land, the Ministry of Finance expressed skepticism over the viability of a market for mortgage instruments because with mortgages, unlike rentes sur l’Etat or public debt, “the opportunity for an increase of one’s capital is nonexistent.” Even if land could produce value, the conditions that would make this value evident and credible to observers were lacking. As several courts consulted in the 1841 legal consultation pointed out, a tradesman enjoyed credit because his transactions were “based on daily appeals to mutual trust, on the incessant surveillance of public opinion and the sanctions that follow any lack of good faith.” This personal network supplied the instruments he inscribed with a reliable face value. In contrast, “a mortgage’s security cannot be deduced from a glance at a title;” moreover, “a property owner’s transactions are few and secret […] nothing regulates the level of trust he should be accorded.” Indeed, Faucher based his opposition to paper mortgage money in 1848 precisely on what he saw as the wrong-headedness of replacing bills representing “a metallic value, a definitive and universal means of exchange” with bills representing “landed
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