miciliary visits; and any fraud or concealment was declared punishable with death. Commissioners appointed by the communes were authorised to fix the price at which all these articles were to be sold; and if the necessary cost of the manufacture was such as to render the price beyond the reach of the people, they were still to be exposed to sale, at such a reduced price as might bring them within their means -an atrocious edict, pressing with unparalleled severity upon the industrious classes, merely to gratify the needy and clamorous multitude in towns, on whom the government depended, and which, if it had subsisted long in force, would have destroyed all the industry of France, and handed over the people to the unmitigated horrors of actual famine. articles of daily consumption, which necessarily rose with such prodigious additions to the circulating medium. To effect the object, they had recourse to new and still more oppressive regulations. To destroy the competition of rival companies, which prevented the direction of capital towards the purchase of the national domains, they abolished, by decree, all life insurance societies, and all companies of every description of which the shares were transferable from hand to hand; they declared traitors to their country all those who placed their funds in any investments in countries with which the Republic was at war; and condemned to twenty years in irons every person convicted of refusing to receive payment of any debt in assignats, or being concerned in any transaction in which they were received at less than their nominal value. Any person found guilty of buying or selling assignats was to be punished with death, by a decree of 5th September. They ordered that the bells of the churches should everywhere be melted down into sou pieces, to answer the immediate wants of the peasantry; and passed a second decree, which ranked forestalling with capital crimes. By this last law, it was declared that every one was to be considered as a forestaller, who withdrew from circulation merchandise of primary necessity, without immediately exposing it to public sale. The articles which had been previously declared to be of primary necessity, were bread, wine, butcher-meat, grain, oats, vege-pelled, by the terror of death, to sell at tables, fruits, coal, wood, butter, cheese, linen, cotton stuffs, and dress of every description, except silks. For all these articles a tariff of prices was fixed, far below what they could be purchased for or produced by the retail dealers, manufacturers, or farmers. To carry into execution this iniquitous decree, the most inquisitorial powers were conferred on the commissaries named by the commune. Every merchant was obliged, at their summons, to give a stateinent of the goods contained in his warehouses; these declarations were liable to be checked at any hour by do VOL. III. 66. These extravagant measures had not been many months in operation, before they produced the most disastrous effects. A great proportion of the shops in Paris and all the principal towns were shut; business of every sort was at a stand; the laws of the maximum, and against forestallers, had spread terror and distrust as much among the middle classes, who had commenced the Revolution, as the guillotine had among the nobles and priests, who had been its earliest victims. The retail dealers, who had purchased the articles in which they dealt from wholesale merchants before the law of the maximum, at a price higher than that allowed by the new tariff, were com a loss to themselves, and saw their fortunes gradually melting away in their daily transactions. Even those who had laid in their stock after the imposition of the maximum were in no better situation, for that regulation had only fixed their price when retailed to the public; but as it had not fixed the price at which the previous manufacture was to be accomplished, nor the needful expense of transport and storing it in their warehouses effected, and as their operations were necessarily paid in proportion to the depreciated value of the currency, the subsequent sale at the C prices fixed by the maximum entailed | be struck with the sword; he that ruinous losses on the tradesmen. The strikes with poison should be struck consequence was, that the greater part with poison; he that famishes the people of the shops were everywhere closed, should die of famine. If subsistence and those who continued to do business and articles of merchandise are wantdid so only by fraud; the worst articles ing, from whom shall the people seize alone were exposed to public sale at the them? From the Convention? No. legal price, and the best reserved for From the constituted authorities? No. those who were willing in secret to pay They will take them from the shoptheir real value. A sepulchral silence keepers and merchants. It is arms, and reigned in the once gay and joyous ca- not gold, which are wanted to set in pital. In many streets hardly a shop motion our manufactories; the world was open; not a light was to be seen must know that the giant people can in the windows at night; and the doors crush all its mercantile speculations. were all barricaded, to give the inhabi- Rousseau has said, when the people have tants the means of escape by the back nothing else to eat, they will eat the rich." windows, if the commissaries of the Convention came to their abodes.* 67. The people, who perceived these frauds, and witnessed the closing of so great a number of shops, were transported with fury, and besieged the Convention with the most violent petitions, insisting that the dealers should be compelled to reopen their shops, and continue to sell as usual, in spite of any loss they might sustain. They denounced the butchers, who were accused of selling unwholesome meat; the bakers, who furnished coarse bread for the poor, and fine for the rich; the winemerchants, who diluted their liquors by the most noxious drugs; the saltmerchants, the grocers, the confectioners, who conspired together to adulterate the articles in which they dealt in a thousand different ways. Chaumette, the procureur-général, supported their demands in a violent speech. "We sympathise," said he, "with the evils of the people, because we are the people ourselves; the whole council is composed of Sans-culottes; it is the sovereign multitude. We care not though our heads fall, provided posterity will deign to collect our skulls. It is not the Gospel which I invoke-it is Plato. He that strikes with the sword should "Instead of the bustle of active life, and the striking splendour which formerly distinguished Paris, a funereal silence reigns in all quarters of the town; all the shops are already shut, every man hastens to barricade himself in his own house; every breathing thing seemed shadowed by the emblems of the tomb."-Forty-eight hours at Paris in the month of September 1793; Deux Amis, xii. 146, 147. 68. Intimidated by such formidable petitioners, the Convention and the municipality adopted still more rigorous measures. Hitherto they had only fixed the price of articles of necessity in a manufactured state, now they resolved to fix the price of the raw material; and the idea was even entertained of seizing the material and the workmen alike for the service of the state, and converting all France into one vast manufactory in the employment of government. The communes declared that every merchant who had been engaged in business for above a year, who either abandoned or diminished it, should be sent to prison as a suspected person; the prices which the merchant could exact from the retailer, and the retailer from the customer, were minutely fixed; the revolutionary committees were alone permitted to issue tickets, authorising purchases of any sort; only one species of bread, of coarse quality, was allowed to be baked; and to prevent the scandalous scenes which daily occurred at the bakers' shops, where a number of the poor passed a part of the night with the cord in their hands, it was enacted+ that the distribu "I demand that, in order to put a stop to the mobs at the doors of the bakers, to save mothers of families from the severe inconvenience they have so long endured, in having to seek their bread as early as four in the morning-the municipality of Paris cause a table to be drawn up, with twelve columns for each month of the year, at the bottom of which there shall be a certificate for the quantity to which each applicant is entitled."-Paroles de GUEROULT; Débats des Jacobins, Oct. 30, 1793. tion should commence with the last arrived-a regulation which only changed the direction of the tumult. These regulations were speedily adopted from the municipality of Paris overall France. Soon after, the Convention adopted the still more hazardous step of fixing the prime cost of all articles of rude produce. The price was fixed on the basis of the prices of 1790, augmented by certain fixed rates for the profit of the different hands through which they passed, before reaching the consumer. To carry into execution the numerous regulations on this subject, a commission of subsistence and provisioning was appointed, with absolute powers, extending overall France: it was charged with the execution of the tariffs, with the superintendence of the conduct of the municipalities in that particular; with continually receiving statements of the quantity of subsistence in the country, and the places where it existed; with transporting it from one quarter to another, and providing for the subsistence of the armies, and the furnishing them with the means of transport. 69. Speculation of every sort-even the gambling of the Bourse-was towards the close of the Reign of Terror almost at an end. The bankers and merchants, accused on all sides of elevating prices, and seeing some of their number daily led out to the scaffold, deserted the Exchange, and sought for an asylum in the solitude of their homes. Industry and activity entirely ceased: every one, intent only on selfpreservation, and fearful of endangering life if he was thought to be making money, remained in sullen inactivity, either enduring or affecting poverty. The aspect of France was that of universal destitution. One would have thought that the whole wealth, which centuries of industry had accumulated, had suddenly been swallowed up. The Company of the Indies, the last existing mercantile establishment, was abolished; government resolved to leave no investment for capital but the purchase of the national domains. 70. Nor was it only on the opulent classes that the revolutionary enact ments pressed with severity; they were equally oppressive to the poorest. Never, in truth, had the labouring poor been subjected to so many and such vexatious restraints, or obedience to them enforced by such numerous and sanguinary punishments. No one ventured to indulge in any luxury, or allow himself any gratification. Metallic currency had almost disappeared, and the poor received their wages merely in paper assignats, with which they were unable to purchase even the necessaries of life, from the enormous extent of their depreciation. Liable to the guillotine if they either sold above the maximum, or refused to take the assignats at their legal and forced valueten times their intrinsic worth-the dealers had no resource but to close their shops, and become mendicants like their customers, at the offices where provisions were distributed. If they were shopkeepers, they were compelled to sell at a fictitious price; if they were purchasers, they were under the necessity of buying the most wretched articles, because the best were withdrawn by the effect of the forced sales enjoined by government. Only one kind of bread, of the blackest and coarsest kind, was to be had, and that could be obtained in no other way but by receiving tickets from the revolutionary committees, and waiting half the night, or for hours during the day, at the doors of the bakers, with a rope in the hand. The names of the weights and measures, of the days and months, were changed; the labouring poor had only three Sundays in the month instead of four; the consolations of religion, the worship of the Deity, were at an end. 71. All the efforts of the Committee of Public Salvation, after some time, became insufficient to procure an adequate supply of subsistence. Commerce escaped the ruinous law of the maximum, and it escaped it in the most disastrous of all ways-by a total cessation. Want of the severest kind was experienced in every branch of human consumption; the ordinary supplies of butcher-meat failed, and as it could still be publicly sold only at the maximum, the butchers exposed only the most un wholesome kind of food, and reserved | days half a pound of meat to each the better sort for clandestine sale.* family for each head. The same cartes The evil soon extended to other articles; de sûreté were issued by the revoluvegetables, fruits, eggs, butter, and fish, tionary committees for this scanty aid, disappeared from the markets. Bands as for the rations of bread. Shortly of persons travelled far on the high- after, the supply of wood and charcoal roads, and met them as they were ap- was found to fail, and laws were passed, proaching Paris, where they were clan- preventing any one from having in destinely purchased at prices far above store more than a very limited quanthe maximum, for the use of the opu- tity of these necessary articles. Lastly, lent classes. The people were animated the Convention, in February 1794, prowith the most violent indignation at claimed a general fast for six weeks so these practices, and, to put a stop to far as butcher-meat was concerned. them, the Commune enacted that no "Decree the fast I propose," said Barbutchers should be permitted to go out ère, "or it will come in spite of you. to meet the cattle on their way to the We shall soon have neither meat nor markets; that no meat should be bought candles. The oxen which are killed or sold but at the established stalls; and just now, have not enough of suet in that no crowd should be allowed to them to make candles for their own collect round the bakers' doors before slaughtering.” † six in the morning, instead of three, the time when they usually began to assemble. These regulations, like all the others, failed of effect; the crowds were just as great and as clamorous round the bakers' shops as before: vio-M. Thiers, demonstrate that the picture lent tumults constantly arose among those who had got possession of the ropes at their doors; and, as a last resource, the government was preparing to lay out the gardens of the Tuileries, of the Luxembourg, and of all the opulent persons round Paris, in the cultivation of garden stuffs. 72. At length the evils arising from the maximum became so excessive, that the inhabitants of Paris were obliged to be put on a limited allowance of animal food. The Commission for Provisions fixed the daily consumption at 75 oxen, 150 quintals of mutton and veal, and 200 hogs. All the animals intended for the consumption of the metropolis were brought to a public market-place, where alone meat was allowed to be sold; and the butchers were only allowed to deliver every five "But you, unfeeling men, called butchers, you make yourselves the instruments of the anti-revolutionists. The poor man who comes to you rejected, insulted, can only get the refuse of the meat; while the rich man, who laughs at the sufferings of others, is received with fawning politeness, is favoured with the best cuts and most delicate morsels, because he pays."-Proclamation du Comité de Surveillance de Paris, March 5, 1794; Hist. Parl. xxxii. 4, 5. 73. The preceding details, all purposely taken from official documents and decrees of the Republican writers of France, and especially from their avowed and able leader and historian, drawn by a contemporary writer was not overcharged; and that the genius of Mr Burke had justly discerned, amid the transports of democracy, the galling bondage it was inflicting on mankind. "The state of France," says he, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions the oppressors and the oppressed. The first have the whole authority of the state in their hands; all the arms, all the revenues of the public, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower sort from their occupations, and have put them into pay, that they may form them into a body of janissaries to overrule and awe property. The heads of these wretches they have never suffered to cool. They supply them with a food for fury varied by the day, besides the sensual state of intoxication from which they are rarely free. They have made the priests and people formally abjure the Divinity; they have estranged them from every civil, moral, and social, or even natural and instinctive sentiment, habit, and practice, and have rendered them sys The cattle in Paris, by a regulation of the police, are all slaughtered at four A.M. tematically savages, to make it impossible for them to be the instruments of any sober and virtuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any state of order, under any name whatsoever. The other description-the oppressed -are people of some property: they are the small relics of the persecuted landed interest; they are the burghers and the farmers. By the very circumstance of their being of some property, though numerous in some points of view, they cannot be very considerable as a number. In cities, the nature of their occupations renders them domestic and feeble; in the country, it confines them to their farm for subsistence. The national guards are all changed and reformed. Everything suspicious in the description of which they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called of vigilance and safety, are everywhere formed-a most severe and scrutinising inquisition, far more rigid than anything ever known or imagined. Two persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers scarcely credible have been executed, and their property confiscated. At Paris, and in most other towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole, which they cannot obtain without a daily ticket delivered to them by their masters. Multitudes of all ages and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason to believe, that in France there are not, for various state crimes, so few as twenty thousand actually in jail-a large proportion of people of property in any state.* If a father of a family should show any disposition to resist, or to withdraw himself from their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages that they keep the troops, which they force by masses (as they call it) into the field, true to their colours. Another of their resources is not to be forgotten. They have lately found a way of giving a sort of ubi* How much was this within the truth! When Mr Burke said this, in spring 1794, the prisoners in France exceeded 200,000. Even his ardent imagination fell immeasurably short of the real atrocities of the Reign of Terror. quity to the supreme sovereign authority, which no monarch has been able yet to give to any representative of his. The commissioners of the National Convention, who are the members of the Convention itself, and really exercise all its powers, make continual circuits through every province, and visits to every army. There they supersede all the ordinary authorities, civil and military, and change and alter everything at their pleasure. So that, in effect, no deliberative capacity exists in any portion of the inhabitants." + 74. In the midst of all these extraordinary and unprecedented changes in society, however, the moral laws of nature were unceasingly working, and preparing, amid the present triumph of wickedness, its final and condign punishment. Divisions, as usual, had sprung up in the victorious body on the destruction of their opponents. Two parties remained opposed, on different principles, to the Decemvirs, whose destruction was indispensable to the full establishment of their despotic authority. These parties were the Moderates and the Anarchists. At the head of the former were Danton and Camille Desmoulins; the latter was supported by the powerful municipality of Paris. It has been already observed, that Danton and his party were strangers to the real objects of the revolt on 31st May. They aided the populace in the struggle with the Convention; but they had no intention of establishing the oligarchy which directed, and finally triumphed by their exertions. After the overthrow of the Girondists, Robespierre urged Danton to retire to the country. A tempest is arising," said he; "the Jacobins have not forgot your relations with Dumourier. They hate your manners; your voluptuous and indolent habits are at variance with their austere disposition and undying energy. Withdraw for a little; trust to a friend, who will watch over your danger, and warn you of the first moment to return." Danton followed his advice, nothing loth to get quit of a faction of which he began to dread the ↑ Burke on the Policy of the Allies. |