XIV. 1793. CHAP. 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 distribution 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 over all 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 over all France; it was charged with the execution of the tariffs, with the superintendence of the conduct of the municipalities in that particular; with 1 Decree, continually receiving statements of the quantity of sub29th Sept. sistence in the country, and the places where it existed; xxix. p. 12, with transporting it from one quarter to another, and 404, 406. providing for the subsistence of the armies, and the furnishing them with the means of transport.1 Sept. 5. Hist. Parl. 13. Th. v. 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 * "Je demande que pour faire cesser les attroupemens à la porte des boulangers, enfin pour que les mères de famille puissent être débarrassées de tant d'oppression où elles sont depuis longtems, en allant chercher leur pain dès les quatre heures du matin; que la municipalité de Paris fasse former un tableau à douze colonnes pour tous les mois de l'année, au bas duquel il y aura un certificat qui attestera la quantité de pain à délivrer au porteur."- Paroles de GUEROULT; Débats des Jacobins, 30 Oct. 1793. XIV. 1793. 69. on the in classes. on all sides of elevating prices, and seeing some of their CHAP. 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 Grinding one, intent only on self-preservation, and fearful of en- oppression dangering life if he was thought to be making money, dustriou 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, 1 Deux the last existing mercantile establishment, was abolished; 147, 149. government resolved to leave no investment for capital 410. but the purchase of the national domains.1 1 Amis, xii. Th. v. 409, 70. the poor. Nor was it only on the opulent classes that the revolutionary enactments pressed with severity; they were And on 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 value-ten 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 la Commune shopkeepers, they were compelled to sell at a fictitious de Paris, price; if they were purchasers, they were under the neces- 1793. Deux sity of buying the most wretched articles, because the best 177-185, were withdrawn by the effect of the forced sales enjoined Parl. xxxi. by government.2 Only one kind of bread, of the blackest 435. and coarsest kind, was to be had, and that could 2 Decrét de 25 Déc. Amis, xii. and Hist. 47. Th. v. XIV. 1794. CHAP. 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. titute and condition. March 5, 1794. All the efforts of the Committee of Public Salvation, Their des- after some time, became insufficient to procure an adequate deplorable 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 unwholesome kind of food, and reserved the better sort for clandestine sale.* The evil soon extended to other articles; vegetables, fruits, eggs, butter, and fish, disappeared from the markets. Bands of persons travelled far on the high-roads, and met them as they were approaching Paris, where they were clandestinely purchased at prices far above the maximum, for the use of the opulent classes. The people were animated with the most violent indignation at these practices, and, to put a stop to them, the Commune enacted that no butchers should be permitted to go out to meet the cattle on their way to the markets; that no meat should be bought or sold but at the established stalls; and that no crowd should be allowed to collect round the bakers' doors before six in the morning, instead of three, the time Feb. 15. * "Mais vous, hommes insensibles, qu'on appelle bouchers, vous devenez les perfides instrumens des contrerévolutionnaires. Le pauvre qui se présente chez vous, rejeté, humilié, n'en emporte que des os de rebut; tandis que le riche qui se rit des souffrances des autres est accueilli avec une politesse recherchée, trouve la plus belle tranche, les morceaux les plus délicats, parce qu'il paye."--Proclamation du Comité de Surveillance de Paris, 5 Mars 1794; Hist. Parl. xxxii. 4, 5. XIV. 1793. when they usually began to assemble. These regulations, CHAP. like all the others, failed of effect; the crowds were just as great and as clamorous round the bakers' shops as before: violent 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 xxxii. 459. all the opulent persons round Paris, in the cultivation of 151. garden stuffs.1 1 Hist. Parl. Th. vi. 146, At length the evils arising from the maximum became 72. rations. tion of the 21st and 22d so excessive, that the inhabitants of Paris were obliged to People of Paris put be put on a limited allowance of animal food. The Com- on reduced mission for Provisions fixed the daily consumption at 75 Fresh arbioxen, 150 quintals of mutton and veal, and 200 hogs. trary taxaAll the animals intended for the consumption of the opulent, metropolis were brought to a public market-place, where Feb. alone meat was allowed to be sold; and the butchers were only allowed to deliver every five days half a pound of meat to each family for each head. The same cartes de sûreté were issued by the revolutionary committees for this scanty aid, as for the rations of bread. Shortly after, the supply of wood and charcoal was found to fail, and laws were passed, preventing any one from having in store more than a very limited quantity of these necessary articles. Lastly, the Convention, in February 1794, proclaimed a general fast for six weeks so far as butcher- Decree, meat was concerned. "Decree the fast I propose," said 21st Feb. Barère," or it will come in spite of you. We shall soon xxxii. 9, 10, have neither meat nor candles. The oxen which are teur, 5th killed just now, have not enough of suet in them to make vi. 310, 314. candles for their own slaughtering."2* 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, M. Thiers, demonstrate that the picture * The cattle in Paris, by a regulation of the police, are all slaughtered at four A.M. Hist. Parl. and Moni March. Th. 73. Mr Burke's description of France at this period. XIV. 1794. CHAP. 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 systematically 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 descriptionthe 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. Every thing suspicious in the description of which they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called of vigilance and safety, are every where formed-a most severe and scrutinising inquisition, far more rigid than any thing ever known or imagined. Two persons cannot meet and |