XIX. 1795. CHAP. extent went on: the assignats were continually increasing with the vast expenditure of government: and at length it was got over, as will appear in the sequel, by forced means, and the proclamation of a national bankruptcy of the very worst kind. 38. Dreadful scarcity in the abolition But the attention of the Convention was soon drawn to evils of a still more pressing kind. The abolition of Paris from the maximum and of the forced requisitions, had deprived of the forced government of its violent means of feeding the citizens, requisitions. while, in consequence of the shock which these tyrannical proceedings had given to industry, the usual sources of supply were almost dried up. The consequence was a most severe scarcity of every kind of provisions, which went on increasing during the whole of the winter of 1794-5, and at length, in March 1795, reached the most March 24. alarming height. To the natural evils of famine were superadded the horrors of a winter of uncommon severity, such as had not been experienced in Europe for a hundred years. The roads, covered with ice, soon became impassable for carriages; the canals were frozen up; and the means of subsistence to the metropolis seemed to be totally exhausted. In this extremity every family endeavoured to lay in stores for a few days, and the few convoys which approached Paris were besieged by crowds of famishing citizens, who proceeded twenty and thirty miles to anticipate the ordinary supplies. Nothing remained for government, who still adhered, though with weakened powers, to the system of distributing food to the people, but to diminish the rations daily issued; and on the report of Boissy-d'Anglas, the quantity served out from the public magazines was diminished to one-half, or a pound of bread a-day for each person above the working classes, and a pound and a half to those actually engaged in labour.1 1 Deux Amis, xiv. 99, 108. Hist. Parl, xxxvi. 261. Th. vii. 246, 248. Lac. xii. 192. At this rate, there was daily distributed to the six hundred and thirty-six thousand inhabitants of the capital eighteen hundred and ninety-seven casks of flour. But CHAP. 1795. 39. fare and suf ferings of small as this quantity was, it was soon found necessary to reduce it still further; and at length, for several weeks, each citizen received only two ounces of black and coarse bread a-day. Small as this pittance was, Miserable it could be obtained only by soliciting tickets from the f committees of government, and after waiting at the doors the people. of the bakers from eleven at night till seven in the morning, during the rigour of an arctic winter. The citizens of Paris were for months exposed to the horrors Hist. Parl. of a state of siege; numbers perished of famine, and 261. Thi many owed their existence to the kindness of some friend 246, 252. in the country, and the introduction of the potato, which 193. Deux already began to assuage this artificial, as it has so often 24, 26. since done the most severe natural scarcities. 1 Th.vii. Lac.xii.191, Amis, xiv. depreciation of the assig public de The abolition of the maximum, of the requisitions, and 40. of all the forced methods of procuring supplies, produced, Enormous as might have been anticipated, a most violent reaction on in the value the price of every article of consumption, and, by conse- nats, and quence, on the value of the assignats. Foreign commerce pair in conhaving begun to revive with the cessation of the Reign of sequence. Terror, sales being no longer forced, the assignat was brought into comparison with the currency of other countries, and its enormous inferiority precipitated still further its fall. The rapidity of its decline gave rise to numerous speculations on the Exchange of Paris; and the people, in the midst of the horrors of famine, were exasperated by the sight of fortunes made out of the misery which they endured. Government, to provide for the necessities of the inhabitants, had no other resource but to increase the issue of assignats for the purchase of provisions; three milliards more of francs (£120,000,000) were issued for this necessary purpose, and the consequence was, that the paper-money fell almost to nothing. Bread was exposed for sale at twenty-two francs the pound in assignats, and what formerly cost 100 francs was now raised to 4000. In the course of the year the depreciation became such, that 28,000 francs in paper VOL. III. 2 Q CHAP. 1795. 1 Hist. Parl. were exchanged for a louis d'or, and a dinner for five or six persons cost 60,000 francs in assignats. A kind of despair seized every mind at such prodigious and appaXXX. 261. rently interminable losses; and it was the force of this Deux Amis, feeling which produced the great revolts already menTh. vii. 376, tioned, which had so nearly proved fatal to the Thermidorians, and restored the whole forced system of the Reign of Terror.1 xiv. 28, 29. 381. Lac. xiii. 40. 41. the laws. June and July. The overthrow of this insurrection led to several laws Changes in which powerfully tended to diminish the destructive ascendency of the people in the government. The national guards were reorganised on the footing on which they had been before the 10th August; the labouring and poorer classes were excluded, and the service was confined to the more substantial citizens. At Paris this important force was placed under the orders of the military committee. The government got quit at the same time of a burdensome and ruinous custom, which the Convention had borrowed from the Athenian democracy, of allowing every indigent citizen fifty sous a-day, while they were engaged at their respective sections-a direct premium on idleness, and a constant inducement to the turbulent and restless to assemble at these great centres of democratic power. The churches were restored to the anxious wishes of the Catholics, on the condition that they should maintain them themselves the first symptom of a return to religious feeling in that infidel age.2 2 Th. vii. 419, 420. Lac. xiii. 43. Hist. Parl. xxxvii. 1, 12. 42. All the evils, the necessary result of an excessive and Unsuccess forced paper-circulation, went on increasing after the sures of the government, which had returned to moderate measures, to arrest the was installed in power. Subsistence was constantly ful mea government evil. wanting in the great towns; the treasury was empty of all but assignats; the great bulk of the national domains remained unsold; the transactions, debts, and properties of individuals were involved in inextricable confusion. Sensible of the necessity of doing something for those who were paid in the government paper, the Directory CHAP. XIX. 1795. adopted a scale by which the assignats were taken as worth a fifth of their nominal value; but this was an inconsiderable relief, as they had fallen to a hundred-andfiftieth part of the sum for which they had been originally issued. The consequence of this excessive depreciation in a paper which was still a legal tender was, that the whole debts of individuals were extinguished by a payment worth nothing; that the income of the fundholders was annihilated; and the state itself, compelled to receive its own paper in payment of the taxes, found the treasury filled with a mass of sterile assignats. But for the half of Deux the land-tax, which was received in kind, the government Amis, xiv. would have been literally without the means of feeding Parl.xxxvii. either Paris or the armies. The excess of the paper- viii. 85, 86. circulation had rendered it valueless, and in effect reduced 36. the transactions of men to barter.1 28,29. Hist. 12,36. Th. Lac. xiii. 32, 43. nane and aboli Revolution nal. Hitherto the reaction had been in favour of constitutional and moderate measures; but the last great victory over Further the Jacobins revived the hopes of the Royalists. The progress of emigrants and the clergy had returned in great numbers measures, since the repeal of the severe laws passed against them tion of the during the Reign of Terror, and contributed powerfully to ary Tribuincline the public mind to a moderate and constitutional monarchy. The horror excited by the sanguinary proceedings of the Jacobins was so strong and universal, that the reaction naturally was in favour of a royalist government. The recent successes of the Troupe Dorée, who formed the flower of the youth of Paris, had awakened in them a strong esprit de corps, and prepared the great and inert body of the people to follow a banner which had so uniformly led to victory. So strong was the feeling at that period, from recent and grievous experience of the danger of popular tumults, that, after the disarming of the faubourgs, several sections made a voluntary surrender of their artillery to the government. A large body of troops of the line, supported by a considerable train of artillery, CHAP. 1795. 66 was brought to Paris, and encamped in the plain of Sablons; and the galleries of the Convention were closed except to persons having tickets of admission. The language of the deputations of the sections at its bar became openly hostile to the dominion of the people, and such as would a few months earlier have been a sure passport to the scaffold. Experience," said the deputies of the section Lepelletier, "has taught us that the despotism of the people is as insupportable as the tyranny of kings." The Revolutionary Tribunal, at the same period, was abolished by a decree of the Convention. A journal of the day observed, "Such was the tranquil and bloodless end of the most atrocious institution of which, since the Council of Blood, established by the 21. Hist. Duke of Alva in the Low Countries, the history of tribunals, instruments of injustice, has preserved the remembrance."1 June 17. Th. viii. 20, Parl.xxxvii. 66,75. 44. Formation of a new constitution. During this revolution of public opinion, the Convention was engaged in the formation of a constitution. It is in the highest degree both curious and instructive to contemplate the altered doctrines which prevailed after the consequences of popular government had been experienced, and how generally men reverted to those principles which, in the commencement of the Revolution, were stigmatised as slavish and disgraceful. Boissy d'Anglas was chosen to make a report upon the form of the constitution; his memoir contains much important truth, which preceding events had forced upon the observation of mankind. "Hitherto," said he, "the efforts of France have been solely directed to destroy; at present, when we are neither silenced by the oppression of tyrants, nor intimidated by the cries of demagogues, we must turn to our advantage the crimes of the monarchy, the errors of the Assembly, the horrors of the Decemviral tyranny, the calamities of anarchy. Absolute equality is a chimera; virtue, talents, physical or intellectual powers, are not equally distributed by nature. Property alone attaches the citizen to his |