Figgis claims that the French Revolutionaries drew inspiration from Juan de Mariana’s endorsement of overthrowing tyrants, but the revolutionaries would have been wise to heed de Mariana’s arguments against fiat money. At the beginning of his treatise on the alteration of money, he writes:

“At the time that there was a great shortage of money in Spain and the treasury was completely exhausted by long and drawn-out wars in many places and by many other problems, many ways to make up for this shortage were thought out and tried. Among others, consideration was given to the debasing of money, and that in two ways:

“First, by doubling the value of existing money, the king gained a good deal: half of the entire sum, which was huge—a great profit in the situation! Second, new money was minted from pure copper with no addition of silver, as was customary. Rather, their weight was diminished by half. In this way, the king profited by more than two-thirds. Men’s plans are not provident. Seduced by present abundance, they gave no consideration to the plan’s inherent evils into which they were rushing. There were, however, those who were more cautious because of their knowledge of history and past evils, and they criticized this approach within their own circles and even in writing. Very soon, events proved that they were not foolish prophets. Things got worse. Some convenient reason was being sought for destroying or recalling that money. Some consultants recommended the debasement of silver money to make up, with that profit, for the loss that they saw was necessarily coming because of the old copper money. The cure was more deadly than the disease. It has been rejected until the present. Rather, there was a recent decree recalling a large part of the new money, and for compensating the owners from the royal revenues. Such was the occasion for a new effort to publish this treatise, which we began earlier. It aims at letting other generations learn from our misfortunes that money is hardly ever debased without calamity to the State: Profit for the moment is intimately connected with manifold ruin along with rather great disadvantages.”

The entire treatise is available here: http://www.acton.org/pub/journal-markets-morality/volume-5-number-2