41147 (return)[ "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse" by Pescayre, prisoner, year III, p. 317 ( Messidor 22nd, year II). Pinson, secretary of the reception, indoctrinated as follows the old duke de Lesparre: "Citoyen, your detention is used by your country as a means of conversion. Eight of your immediate family have, because they did not take advantage of his opportunity, carried their heads to the scaffold. What have you done to avoid the sword of justice? Speak! What are your feelings? Let us hear your principles. Have you at last renounced the arrogance of the ancient regime? Do you believe in equality established by nature and ordained by the Convention? Who are the sans-culottes you associate with? Is your cell not a meeting place for the aristocrats?... It is I, who in the future will be your company; I, who will make you familiar with the republican principles, who will make you love them, and who will take care of your improvement."]
41148 (return)[ Taillandier, Mémoires écrits par Daunau, à Port-Libre, in Aug. 1794, p.51, 52.]
41149 (return)[ Granier du Cassagnac, "Histoire du Directoire," i., 107. (Trial of Babeuf, extracts from Buonarotti, programme des "Egaux.") "All literature in favor of Revelation must be prohibited: children are to be brought up in common; the child will no longer bear his father's name; no Frenchman shall leave France; towns shall be demolished, chateaux torn down and books proscribed; all Frenchmen shall wear one special costume; armies shall be commanded by civil magistrates; the dead shall be prosecuted and obtain burial only according to the favorable decision of the court; no written document shall be published without the consent of the government, etc."—Cf. "Les Meditations de Saint-Just."]
41150 (return)[ Guillon de Montléon, II., 174.]
41151 (return)[ "Memoires sur les Prisons," I., 211, II., 187.—Beaulieu, "Essais," V., 320. "The prisons became the rendezvous of good society."]
41152 (return)[ "The Revolution," vol.3, ch. 6, ante.]
41153 (return)[ Chateaubriand: "Génie du Christianisme," part 4, book II., notes on the exhumations at St. Denis taken by a monk, an eye-witness. Destruction, August 6 and 8, 1793, of fifty-one monuments. Exhumation of bodies, October 12 and 25, 1793.—Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," p.223. (Testimony of Bordier-Langlois.) "I saw the head of our good Duke Réné, deposited in the chapel of St. Bernardin, in the Cordéliers at Angers, tossed like a ball by some laborers from one to the other."]
41154 (return)[ R. Chantelauze, "Louis XVII.," (according to unpublished documents). This book, free of declamation and composed according to the critical method, sets this question at rest.]
41155 (return)[ Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire," III., 285.—Campardon, "Hist. du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris," I., 306. Brochet, one of the jury, was formerly a lackey.]
41156 (return)[ The above simply conveys the sense of the document, which is here given in the original: "Si tu n'est pas toute seulle et que le compagnion soit a travailier tu peus ma chaire amie venir voir juger 24 mesieurs tous si-deven président on conselier au parlement de Paris et de Toulouse. Je t' ainvite a prendre quelque choge aven de venir parcheque nous naurons pas fini de 3 hurres. Je tembrase ma chère amie et épouge." (TR).]
41157 (return)[ Wallon, III., 402.]
41158 (return)[ Campardon, II., 350.—Cf. Causeries du Lundi," II., 164. Saint-Beuve's comment on the examination. "André Chénier, natife de Constantinoble....son frère vice-consulte en Espagne. "Remark the questions on his health and correspondence and the cock-and-bull story about the 'maison a cotté.' "—They ask him where his servant was on the 10th of August, 1792, and he replies that he could not tell. "A lui representé qua lepoque de cette journee que touts les bons citoyent ny gnoroit point leurs existence et quayant enttendue batte la générale cettait un motife de plus pour reconnoitre tous les bons citoyent et le motife au quelle il setait employée pour sauvee la Republique. A repondue quil avoit dite l'exacte véritée. A lui demandée quel etoit dite l'exacte veritée—a repondue que cetoit toutes ce qui etoit cy dessue."]
Complexity of the economical operation by which articles ofprime necessity reach the consumer.—Conditions of theoperation.—Available resources.—Cases in which these arenot available.—Case of the holder of these being no longerdisposed to make them.
Suppose a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable, moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly. But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert.—Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,4201the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nourishment of the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties and deficiencies, that the patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if to-morrow will not be worse than to-day, and whether his semi-starvation will not end in complete starvation.
Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the physiological process by which, in the organized body, the proper restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organized body, the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and co-ordinate with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all contribute.
Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their mode of operation. In any tolerably civilized community that has lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or produce.—And see what use they make of these: each person, reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real-estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed and farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the common-carrier his vessels, vehicles and horses, the trader his warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop and supplies for a fortnight. To which everybody, the agriculturist, merchant and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks, and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen.—Otherwise, it would be impossible to till the soil, to build, to fabricate, to transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in kind. In every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed corn. If I want to dig a hole I am obliged to hire a pick and the arms to wield it, or, in other terms, to make certain advances. But these advances are made only on two conditions: first, that he who makes them is able to make them, that is to say, that he is the possessor of an available surplus; and next, being the owner of this surplus, that he desires to make them, with this proviso that he may gain instead of losing by the operation.—If I am wholly or partially ruined, if my tenants and farmers do not pay their rent,4202if my lands or goods do not bring half their value in the market, if the net proceeds of my possessions are threatened with confiscation or pillage, not only have I fewer securities to dispose of, but, again, I become more and more uneasy about the future; over and above my immediate consumption I have to provide for a prospective consumption; I add to my reserve stores especially of coin and provisions; I hold on to the remnant of my securities for myself and those who belong to me; they are no longer available and I can no longer make loans or enter upon my enterprise. And, on the other hand, if the loan or enterprise, instead of bringing me a profit, brings me loss; if the law is powerless or fails to do me justice and adds extra to ordinary risks; if my work once perfected is to become the prey of the government, of brigands or of whoever pleases to seize it; if I am compelled to surrender my wares and merchandise at one-half their cost; if I cannot produce, put in store, transport or sell except by renouncing all profit and with the certainty of not getting back my advances, I will no longer make loans or enter upon any under-taking whatever.
Such is the disposition and situation of people able to make advances in anarchical times, when the State falters and no longer performs its customary service, when property is no longer adequately protected by the public force, when jacqueries overspread the country and insurrections break out in the towns, when chateaux are sacked, archives burnt, shops broken into, provisions carried off and transportation is brought to a halt, when rents and leases are no longer paid, when the courts dare no longer convict, when the constable no longer dares serve a warrant, when the gendarmerie holds back, when the police fails to act, when repeated amnesties shield robbers and incendiaries, when a revolution brings into local and central power dishonest and impoverished adventurers hostile to every one that possesses property of any kind.—Such is the disposition and situation of all who are in possession of the means to initiate projects in socialistic times
* when the usurping State, instead of protecting private property, destroys or seizes it;
* when it takes for itself the property of many of the great corporations;
* when it suppresses legally established credits without indemnity;
* when, by dint of expenditure and the burdens this creates, it becomes insolvent;
* when, through its paper-money and forced circulation, it annuls indebtedness in the hands of the creditor, and allows the debtor to go scot-free;
* when it arbitrarily seizes current capital;
* when it makes forced loans and requisitions;
* when its tax on productions surpasses the cost of production and on merchandise the profit on its sale;
* when it constrains the manufacturer to manufacture at a loss and the merchant to sell at a loss;
* when its principles, judged by its acts, indicate a progression from partial to a universal confiscation.—
Ineluctably every phase of disease engenders the evil which follows: it is like a poison the effects of which spread or pass onwards. Each function, affected by the derangement of the adjacent one, becoming disturbed in its turn. The perils, mutilation and suppression of property diminish available securities as well as the courage that risks them, that is to say, the mode of, and disposition to, make advances. Through a lack of funds, useful enterprises languish, die out or are not undertaken. Consequently, the production, supply, and sale of indispensable articles slacken, become interrupted and cease altogether. There is less soap and sugar and fewer candles at the grocery, less wood and coal in the wood-yard, fewer oxen and sheep in the markets, less meat at the butcher's, less grain and flour at the corn-exchange, and less bread at the bakeries. As articles of prime necessity are scarce they become dear; as people contend for them their dearness increases; the rich man ruins himself in the struggle to get hold of them, while the poor man never gets any, and the bare necessities become unattainable.
Economical effect of the Jacobin policy from 1789 to 1793.—Attacks on property.—Direct attacks.—Jacqueries, effectiveconfiscations and proclamation of the socialist creed.—Indirect attacks.—Bad administration of the public funds.—Transformation of taxation and insignificance of thereturns.—Increased expenditures.—The War-budget andsubsistence after 1793.—Paper money.—Enormous issues ofit.—Credit of the Assignats run down.—Ruin of Publiccreditors and of all private credit.—Rate of interestduring the Revolution.—Stoppage of trade and industry.—Badmanagement of new land-owners.—Decrease of productivelabor.—Only the small rural land-owner worksadvantageously.—Why he refuses Assignats.—He is no longerobliged to sell his produce at once.—High cost of food.—Itreaches a market with difficulty and in small quantities.—The towns buy at a high price and sell at a low one.—Foodbecomes dearer and famine begins.—Prices during the firstsix months of 1793.
Such is the hardship in France at the moment when the Jacobin conquest has been completed, a misery of which the Jacobins are the cause due to the systematic war they have waged against property during the preceding four years.
From below, they have provoked, excused, amnestied, or tolerated and authorized all the popular attacks on property,4203countless insurrections, seven successive jacqueries, some of them so extensive as to cover eight or ten departments at the same time. The last one let loose on all France a universal and lasting brigandage, the arbitrary rule of paupers, vagabonds and ruffians; every species of robbery, from a refusal to pay rents and leases to the sacking of chateaux and ordinary domiciles, even to the pillage of markets and granaries. Free scope was given to mobs which, under a political pretext, tax and ransom the "suspects" of all classes at pleasure, not alone the noble and the rich but the peaceable farmer and well-to-do artisan. In short, the country reverted back to a natural state, the sovereignty of appetites, greed and lust, to mankind's return to a savage, primitive life in the forests. Only a short time before, in the month of February, 1793, through Marat's recommendation, and with the connivance of the Jacobin municipality, the Paris riff-raff had broken into twelve hundred groceries and divided on the spot, either gratis or at the price it fixed, sugar, soap, brandy and coffee.
From above, they had undertaken, carried out and multiplied the worst assaults on property, vast spoliations of every sort; the suppression of hundreds of millions of incomes and the confiscation of billions of capital; the abolition without indemnity of tithes and quitrents; the expropriation of the property of the clergy, of emigrés, that of the order of Malta, that of the pious, charitable and educational associations and endowments, even laic; seizures of plate, of the sacred vessels and precious ornaments of the churches. And, because they have the power, others still more vast. After August 10, their newspapers in Paris and their commissioners in the departments,4204have preached
"the agrarian law, the holding of all property in common, the leveling of fortunes, the right of each fraction of the sovereign people" to help itself by force to all food and stores at the expense of the owner, to hunt down the rich, proscribe "land-owners, leading merchants, financiers and all men in possession of whatever is superfluous."
Rousseau's dogma that "the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to no one" is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme. According to Robespierre,4205
"whatever is essential to preserve life is common property to society at large. It is only the excess which may be given up to individuals and surrendered to commercial enterprise."
With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all-powerful Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions, pens the following formula heavy with their consequences:4206
"Society must provide for the support of all its members. The aid required by indigence is a debt of the rich to the poor. The right of property is limited, and applies only to that portion which the law guarantees. Every ownership, any trade, which bears prejudicially on the existence of our fellow-creatures is necessarily illicit and immoral."
The meaning of this is more than clear: the Jacobin populace, having decided that the possession of, and trade in, groceries was prejudicial to its existence, the grocers' monopoly is, therefore, immoral and illicit, and consequently, it pillages their shops. Under the rule of the populace and of the "Mountain," the Convention applies the theory, seizes capital wherever it can be found, and notifies the poor, in its name,
"that they will find in the pocket-books of the rich whatever they need to supply their wants."4207
Over and above these striking and direct attacks, an indirect and hidden attack, even more significant, which slowly undermines the basis of all present and future property. State affairs are everybody's affairs, and, when the State ruins itself, everybody is ruined along with it. For, it is the country's greatest debtor and its greatest creditor, while there is no debtor so free of seizure and no creditor so absorbing, since, making the laws and possessing the force, it can, firstly, repudiate indebtedness and send away the fund-holder with empty hands, and next, increase taxation and empty the taxpayer's pocket of his last penny. There is no greater menace to private fortunes than the bad administration of the public fortune. Now, under the pressure of Jacobin principles and of the Jacobin faction, the trustees of France have administered the country as if they purposely meant to ruin their ward; every known means for wasting a fortune have been brought into play by them.—In the first place, they have deprived him of three-fourths of his income. To please the people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors, meat, tobacco, leather and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns. On the 1st of February, 1793,4208the Treasury had received on the real and personal taxation of 1791, but one hundred and fifty millions instead of three hundred millions. On the same taxes for 1792, instead of three hundred millions it had obtained nothing at all. At this date, and during the four years of the Revolution, the total arrears of taxation amounted to six hundred and thirty-two millions—a bad debt that can hardly be recovered, and, in fact, it is already reduced one-half, since, even if the debtor could and was disposed to pay, he would pay in assignats, which, at this time, were at a discount of fifty per cent.—In the second place, the new managers had quadrupled the public expenditure.4209What with the equipment and excursions of the National Guards federations, patriotic festivals and parades, the writing, printing and publication of innumerable documents, reimbursements for suppressed offices, the installation of new administrations, aid to the indigent and to its charity workshops, purchases of grain, indemnities to millers and bakers, it was under the necessity of providing for the cost of the universal demolition and reconstruction. Now, the State had, for the most part, defrayed all these expenses. At the end of April, 1793, it had already advanced to the city of Paris alone, one hundred and ten million francs, while the Commune, insolvent, kept constantly extorting fresh millions.4210By the side of this gulf, the Jacobins had dug another, larger still, that of the war. For the first half of the year 1793 they threw into this pit first, one hundred and forty millions, then one hundred and sixty millions, and then one hundred and ninety million francs; in the second six months of 1793 the war and provisions swallowed up three hundred million francs per month, and the more they threw into the two gulfs the deeper they became.4211
Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one's resources, and piecemeal, as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not to be had on the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in circulation; one pays tradesmen with written promises in the future, and thus exhausts one's credit. Such is paper money and the assignats, the third and most efficient way for wasting a fortune and which the Jacobins did not fail to make the most of.—Under the Constituent Assembly, through a remnant of good sense and good faith, efforts were at first made to guarantee the fulfillment of written promises the holders of assignats were almost secured by a first mortgage on the national possessions, which had been given to them coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this guarantee, as well as not to issue any more assignats.4212But they did not keep faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage inoperative and, as all chances of re-payment disappeared, its value declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind faster. This is why the guarantee, vainly increased, no longer suffices for the monstrous, disproportionate mortgage; it exceeds all limits, covers nothing, and sinks through its own weight. At Paris, the assignat of one hundred francs is worth in specie, in the month of June, 1791, eighty-five francs, in January, 1792, only sixty-six francs, in March, 1792, only fifty. three francs; rising in value at the end of the Legislative Assembly, owing to fresh confiscations, it falls back to fifty-five francs in January, 1793, to forty-seven francs in April, to forty francs in June, to thirty-three francs in July.4213—Thus are the creditors of the State defrauded of a third, one-half, and two-thirds of their investment, and not alone the creditors of the State but every other creditor, since every debtor has the right to discharge his obligations by paying his debts in assignats. Enumerate, if possible, all who are defrauded of private claims, all money-lenders and stockholders who have invested in any private enterprise, either manufacturing or mercantile, those who have loaned money on Contracts of longer or shorter date, all sellers of real estate, with stipulations in their deeds for more or less remote payment, all landowners who have leased their grounds or buildings for a term of years, all holders of annuities on private bond or on an estate, all manufacturers, merchants and farmers who have sold their wares, goods and produce on time, all clerks on yearly salaries and even all other employees, underlings, servants and workmen receiving fixed salaries for a specified term. There is not one of these persons whose capital, or income payable in assignats, is not at once crippled in proportion to the decline in value of assignats, so that not only the State falls into bankruptcy but likewise every creditor in France, legally bankrupt along with it through its fault.
In such a situation how can any enterprise be commenced or maintained? Who dares take a risk, especially when disbursements are large and returns remote? Who dares lend on long credits—? If loans are still made they are not for a year but for a month, while the interest which, before the Revolution was six, five or even four per cent. per annum, is now two per cent. a month on securities." It soon runs up higher and, at Paris and Strasbourg we see it rising, as in India and the Barbary States, to four, five, six and even seven per cent. a month.4214
What holder of raw material, or of manufactured goods, would dare make entries on his books as usual and allow his customer the indispensable credit of three months? What large manufacturer would presume to make goods up, what wholesale merchant would care to make shipments, what man of wealth or with a competence would build, drain and construct dams and dykes, repair, or even maintain them with the positive certainty of delays in getting back only one-half his outlays and with the increasing certainty of getting nothing?
During a few years the large establishments collapsed in droves:
* After the ruin of the nobles and the departure of wealthy foreigners, every craft dependent on luxurious tastes, those of Paris and Lyons, which were the standard for Europe, all the manufactories of rich fabrics and furniture, and other artistic, elegant and fashionable articles.
* After the insurrection of the blacks in St. Domingo, and other troubles in the West Indies, the great colonial trade and remarkable prosperity of Nantes and Bordeaux, including all the industrial enterprises by which the production, transportation and circulation of cotton, sugar and coffee were affected;4215
* After the declaration of war with England, the shipping interest;
* After the declaration of war with all Europe, the commerce of the continent.4216
Failure after failure, an universal crash, utter cessation of extensively organized and productive labor: instead of productive industries, I see none now but destructive industries, those of the agricultural and commercial vermin, those of dealers in junk and speculators who dismantle mansions and abbeys, and who demolish chateaux and churches so as to sell the materials as cheap as dirt, who bargain away national possessions, so as to make a profit on the transaction. Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt, needy and urged on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do to an estate held under a precarious title and of suspicious acquirement, which he has no idea of keeping, and from which, meanwhile, he derives every possible benefit:4217not only does he put no spokes in the mill-wheel, no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the roof, but he buys no manure, exhausts the soil, devastates the forest, alienates the fields, and dismembers the entire farm, damaging the ground and the stock of tools and injuring the dwelling by selling its mirrors, lead and iron, and oftentimes the window-shutters and doors. He turns all into cash, no matter how, at the expense of the domain, which he leaves in a run-down condition, unfurnished and for a long time unproductive. In like manner, the communal possessions, ravaged, pillaged and then pieced out and divided off, are so many organisms which are sacrificed for the immediate relief of the village poor, but of course to the detriment of their future productiveness and an abundant yield.4218
Alone, amongst these millions of men who have stopped working, or work the wrong way, the petty cultivator labors to advantage; free of taxes, of tithes and of feudal imposts, possessing a scrap of ground which he has obtained for almost nothing or without stretching his purse strings, he works in good spirits.4219He is sure that henceforth his crop will no longer be eaten up by the levies of the seignior, of the décimateur and of the King, that it will belong to him, that it will be wholly his, and that the worse the famine in the towns, the dearer he will sell his produce. Hence, he has ploughed more vigorously than ever; he has even cleared waste ground; getting the soil gratis, or nearly so, and having to make but few advances, having no other use for his advances, consisting of seed, manure, the work of his cattle and of his own hands, he has planted, reaped and raised grain with the greatest energy. Perhaps other articles of consumption will be scarce; it may be that, owing to the ruin of other branches of industry, it will be hard to get dry-goods, shoes, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy; it may happen that, owing to the bungling way in which agricultural transformations have been effected, all produce of the secondary order, meat, vegetables, butter and eggs, may become scarce. In any event, French foodstuffs par excellence is on hand, standing in the field or stored in sheaves in the barns; in 1792 and 1793, and even in 1794, there is enough grain in France to provide every French inhabitant with his daily bread.4220
But that is not enough. In order that each Frenchman may obtain his bit of bread every day, it is still essential that grain should reach the markets in sufficient quantities, and that the bakers should every day have enough flour to make all the bread that is required; moreover, the bread offered for sale in the bakeries should not exceed the price which the majority of consumers can afford to pay. Now, in fact, through a forced result of the new system, neither of these conditions is fulfilled.—In the first place, wheat, and hence bread, is too dear. Even at the old rate, these would still be too dear for the innumerable empty or half-empty purses, after so many attacks on property, industry and trade, now that so many hundreds of workmen and employees are out of work, now that so many land-owners and bourgeois receive no rents, now that incomes, profits, wages and salaries have diminished by hundreds of thousands. But wheat, and, consequently, bread, has not remained at old rates. Formerly a sack of wheat in Paris was worth 50 francs. In February, 1793, it is worth sixty-five francs; in May, 1793, one hundred francs and then one hundred and fifty; and hence bread, in Paris, early in 1793, instead of being three sous the pound, costs six sous, in many of the southern departments seven and eight sous, and in other places ten and twelve sous.4221The reason is, that, since August 10, 1792, after the King's fall and the wrenching away of the ancient keystone of the arch which still kept the loosened stones of the social edifice in place, the frightened peasant would no longer part with his produce; he determined not to take assignats, not to let his grain go for anything but ringing coin. To exchange good wheat for bad, dirty paper rags seemed to him a trick, and justly so, for, on going to town every month he found that the dealers gave him less merchandise for these rags. Being distrustful and a hoarder, he must have good, old fashioned crowns, with the ancient effigy, so as to lay them away in a jar or old woollen stocking; give him specie or he will keep his grain. For he is not, as formerly, obliged to part with it as soon as it is cut, to pay taxes and rent; the bailiff and sheriff are no longer there to constrain him; in these times of disorder and demagoguism, under impotent or partial authorities, neither the public nor the private creditor has the power to compel payment, while the spurs which formerly impelled the farmer to seek the nearest market are blunted or broken. He therefore stays away, and he has excellent reasons for so doing. Vagabonds and the needy stand by the roadside and at the entrances of the towns to stop and pillage the loaded carts; in the markets and on the open square, women cut open bags of grain with their scissors and empty them, or the municipality, forced to do it by the crowd, fixes the price at a reduced rate.4222—The larger a town, the greater the difficulty in supplying its market; for its provisions are drawn from a distance; each department, each canton, each village keeps its own grain for itself by means of legal requisitions or by brutal force; it is impossible for wholesale dealers in grain to make bargains; they are styled monopolists, and the mob, breaking into their storehouses, hangs them out of preference.4223As the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their speculations "crimes," it is going to interdict their trade and substitute itself for them.4224—But this substitution only increases the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond their resources;4225they only make the matter worse. When the municipality of Paris expends twelve thousand francs a day for the sale of flour at a low price in the markets, it keeps away the flour-dealers, who cannot deliver flour at such low figures; the result is that there is not flour enough in the market for the six hundred thousand mouths in Paris; when it expends seventy-five thousand francs daily to indemnify the bakers, it attracts the outside population, which rushes into Paris to get bread cheap, and for the seven hundred thousand mouths of Paris and the suburbs combined, the bakers have not an adequate supply. Whoever comes late finds the shop empty; consequently, everybody tries to get there earlier and earlier, at dawn, before daybreak, and then five or six hours before daybreak in February, 1793, long lines of people are already waiting at the bakers' door, these lines growing longer and longer in April, while in June they are enormously long.4226Naturally, for lack of bread, people fall back on other aliments, which also grow dearer; add to this the various contrivances and effects of Jacobin politics which still further increase the dearness of food of all sorts, and also of every other necessary article: for instance, the extremely bad condition of the roads, which renders transportation slower and more costly; the prohibition of the export of coin and hence the obtaining of food from abroad; the decree which obliges each industrial or commercial association, at present or to come, to "pay annually into the national treasury one-quarter of the amount of its dividends;" the revolt in Vendée, which deprives Paris of six hundred oxen a week; the feeding of the armies, which takes one-half of the cattle brought to the Poissy market; shutting off the sea and the continent, which ruins manufacturers and extensive commercial operations; the insurrections in Bordeaux, Marseilles and the South, which still further raise the price of groceries, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy.4227—Early in 1793, a pound of beef in France is worth on the average, instead of six sous twenty sous; in May, at Paris, brandy which, six months before, cost thirty-five sous, costs ninety-four sous; in July, a pound of veal, instead of five sous, costs twenty-two sous. Sugar, from twenty sous, advances to four francs ten sous; a candle costs seven sous. France, pushed on by the Jacobins, approaches the depths of misery, entering the first circle of its Inferno; other circles follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still and yet more somber; under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the lowest?
First and general cause of privations.—The socialistprinciple of the Revolutionary government.—Measures againstlarge as well as small properties.—Expropriation of allremaining corporations, enormous issues of paper-money.forced rates of its circulation, forced loans, requisitionsof coin and plate, revolutionary taxes, suppression ofspecial organs of labor on a large scale.—New measuresagainst small proprietorship.—The Maximum, requisitions forfood and labor.—Situation of the shop-keeper, cultivatorand laborer.—Effect of the measures on labor on a smallscale. Stoppage of sales.
Obviously, if the people is not being fed properly and in places not at all, it is because one of the central and most important fibers of the economical machine has been incapacitated. It is evident that this fiber controls the sentiment by which man holds on to his property, fears to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to increase it.4228Obviously in the real human being, such as he actually is made up, this intense sentiment, tenacious, always stirring and active, is the magazine of inward energy which provides for three-fourths, almost the whole, of that unremitting effort, that calculating attention, that determined perseverance which leads the individual to undergo privation, to contrive and to exert himself, to turn to profitable account the labor of his hands, brain and capital, and to produce, save and create for himself and for others various resources and comforts.
(It is probable that disinterested motives, pure love for one's neighbor, for humanity, for country, do not form a hundredth part of the total energy that produces human activity. It must not be forgotten that the actions of men are alloyed with motives of a lower order, such as love of fame, the desire of self-admiration and of self-approval, fear of punishment and hope of reward beyond the grave, all of these being interested motives, and without which disinterested motives would be inoperative excepting in two or three souls among ten thousand.4229)
Thus far, in society as a whole, this sentiment has been only partially touched, and the injury has mainly been to the well-to-do or rich classes. At first only one-half of its useful energy has been destroyed since only those services rendered by the rich and wealthy classes have been dispensed with. Little else than the labor of the capitalist, proprietor or contractor has been suppressed, whose far-reaching, combined, comprehensive labor, the rewards of which consist of objects of luxury and convenience, ensure for society that abundant supplies are always on hand, through ready and spontaneous distribution of indispensable commodities. There remains (for the Jacobins) to crush out what is left of this laborious and nutritive fiber; the remnant of useful energy has to be destroyed down to its extirpation among the people. Here there must be a suppression, as far as possible, of all manual, rude labor even on a small scale, and of its rudimentary fruits; the discouragement of the insignificant shopkeeper, mechanic and ploughman must be effected; the corner-grocer must be prevented from selling his sugar and candles, and the cobbler from mending shoes: the miller must think of giving up his mill and the wagoner of abandoning his cart; the farmer must be convinced that the best thing he can do is to get rid of his horses, eat his pork himself,4230let his oxen famish and leave his crops to rot on the ground.—The Jacobins are to do all this, for it is the inevitable result of the theory that they have proclaimed and which they apply. According to this theory the stern, strong, deep-seated instinct through which the individual stubbornly holds on to what he has, to what he makes for himself and for those that belong to him, is just the unwholesome fiber that must be rooted out or paralyzed at any cost; its true name is "egoism, incivism," and its operations consist of outrages on the community, which is the sole legitimate proprietor of property and products, and, yet more, of all persons and services. Body and soul, all belongs to the State, nothing to individuals, and, if need be, the State has the right to take not only lands and capital, but, again, to claim and tax at whatever rate it pleases all corn and cattle, all vehicles and the animals that draw them, all candles and sugar; it has the right to appropriate to itself and tax at whatever rate it pleases, the labor of shoemaker, tailor, miller, wagoner, ploughman, reaper and thrasher. The seizure of men and things is universal, and the new sovereigns do their best at it; for, in practice, necessity urges them on; insurrection thunders at their door; their supporters, all crackbrains with empty stomachs, the poor and the idle, and the Parisian populace, listen to no reason and blindly insist on things haphazard; they are bound to satisfy their patrons at once, to issue one on top of the other all the decrees they call for, even when impracticable and mischievous to starve the provinces so as to feed the city, to starve the former to-morrow so as to feed the latter to-day.—Subject to the clamors and menaces of the street they dispatch things rapidly; they cease to care for the future, the present being all that concerns them; they take and take forcibly; they uphold violence by brutality, they support robbery with murder; they expropriate persons by categories and appropriate objects by categories, and after the rich they despoil the poor.—During fourteen months the revolutionary government thus keeps both hands at work, one hand completing the confiscation of property, large and medium, and the other proceeding to the entire abolition of property even on a small scale.
Against large or medium properties it suffices to extend and aggravate the decrees already passed.—The spoliation of the last of existing corporations must be effected: the government, confiscates the property of hospitals, communes, and all scientific or literary associations.4231
To this we must add the spoliation of State credits and all other credits: it issues in fourteen months 5 100 millions of assignats, at one time and with one decree 1,400 million and another time 2,000 millions. It thus condemns itself to complete future bankruptcy. It also calls in the 1,500 million of assignats bearing the royal stamp (à face royale) and thus arbitrarily converts and reduces the public debt on the Grand Ledger, which is already, in fact, a partial and declared bankruptcy. Six months imprisonment for whoever refuses to accept assignats at par, twenty years in irons if the offence is repeated and the guillotine if there is an incivique intention or act, which suffices for all other creditors.4232
The spoliation of individuals, a forced loan of a billion on the rich, requisitions for coin against assignats at par, seizures of plate and jewels in private houses, revolutionary taxes so numerous as not only to exhaust the capital, but likewise the credit, of the person taxed,4233and the resumption by the State of the public domain pledged to private individuals for the past three centuries. How many years of labor are requisite to bring together again so much available capital, to reconstruct in France and to refill once again those private reservoirs which are to contain the accumulated savings essential for the out-flow required to drive the great wheel of each general enterprise? Take into account, moreover, the enterprises which are directly destroyed, root and branch, by revolutionary executions, enforced against the manufacturers and traders of Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, proscribed in a mass,4234guillotined, imprisoned, or put to flight, their factories stopped, their storehouses put under sequestration, with their stocks of brandy, soap, silk, muslins, leather, paper, serges, cloth, canvas, cordage and the rest; the same at Nantes under Carrier, at Strasbourg under Saint-Just, and everywhere else.4235—"Commerce is annihilated," writes a Swiss merchant,4236from Paris, and the government, one would say, tries systematically to render it impossible. On the 27th of June, 1793, the Convention closes the Bourse; on the 15th of April, 1794, it suppresses "financial associations" and "prohibits all bankers, merchants and other persons from organizing any establishment of the said character under any pretext or title whatsoever." On the 8th of September, 1793, the Commune places seals "in all the counting-houses of bankers, stockbrokers, agents and silver-dealers,"4237and locks up their owners; as a favor, considering that they are obliged to pay the drafts drawn on them, they are let out, but provisionally, and on condition that they remain under arrest at home, "under the guard of two good citizens," at their own expense. Such is the case in Paris and in other cities, not alone with prominent merchants, but likewise with notaries and lawyers, with whom funds are on deposit and who manage estates; a sans-culotte with his pike stands in their cabinet whilst they write, and he accompanies them in the street when they call on their clients. Imagine the state of a notary's office or a counting-room under a system of this sort! The master of it winds up his business as soon as he can, no matter how, makes no new engagements and does as little as possible. Still more inactive than he, his colleagues, condemned to an indefinite listlessness, under lock and key in the common prison, no longer attend to their business.—There is a general, total paralysis of those natural organs which, in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, store, preserve, exchange and transmit in large quantities; and as an after effect, embarrass, saturate, or weaken all the lesser subordinate organs to which the superior ones no longer provide outlets, intermediary agencies or aliment.
It is now the turn of the small enterprises. Whatever their sufferings may be they are ordered to carry their work out as in normal times, and they will be forced to do this. The Convention, pursuing its accustomed rigid logical course with its usual shortsightedness, lays on them its violent and inept hands; they are trodden down, trampled upon and mauled for the purpose of curing them. Farmers are forbidden to sell their produce except in the markets, and obliged to bring to these a quota of so many sacks per week, military raids compelling them to furnish their quotas.4238Shopkeepers are ordered "to expose for sale, daily and publicly, all goods and provisions of prime necessity" that they have on hand, while a maximum price is established, above which no one shall sell "bread, flour and grain, vegetables and fruits, wine, vinegar, cider, beer and brandy, fresh meat, salt meat, pork, cattle, dried, salted, smoked or pickled fish, butter, honey, sugar, sweet-oil, lamp-oil, candles, firewood, charcoal and other coal, salt, soap, soda, potash, leather, iron, steel, castings, lead, brass, hemp, linen, woolens, canvas and woven stuffs, sabots, shoes and tobacco." Whoever keeps on hand more than he consumes is a monopolist and commits a capital crime; the penalty, very severe, is imprisonment or the pillory, for whoever sells above the established price:4239such are the simple and direct expedients of the revolutionary government, and such is the character of its inventive faculty, like that of the savage who hews down a tree to get at its fruit.—Consequently, after the first application of the "maximum" the shopkeeper is no longer able to carry on business; his customers, attracted by the sudden depreciation in price of his wares, flock to his shop and empty it in a few days;4240having sold his goods for half what they cost him,4241he has got back only one-half of his advances; therefore, he can only one-half renew his assortment, less than a half, since he has not paid his bills, and his credit is declining, the (Jacobin) representatives on mission having taken all his coin, plate and assignats. Hence, during the following month, buyers find on his unfurnished counters nothing but rubbish and refuse.
In like manner, after the proclamation of the maximum,4242the peasant refuses to bring his produce to market, while the revolutionary army is not everywhere on hand to take it from him by force: he leaves his crop unthrashed as long as he can, and complains of not finding the men to thrash it. If necessary, he hides it or feeds it out to his animals. He often barters it away for wood, for a side of bacon or in payment for a day's work. At night, he carts it off six leagues to a neighboring district, where the local maximum is fixed at a higher rate. He knows who, in his own vicinity, still has specie in his pocket and he underhandedly supplies him with his stores. He especially conceals his superabundance and, as formerly, pretends to be poor and suffering. He is on good terms with the village authorities, with the mayor and national agent who are as interested as he is in evading the law, and, on a bribe being necessary, he gives it. At last, he allows himself to be sued, and his property attached; he goes to prison and tires the authorities out with his obstinacy. Hence, from week to week, less flour and grain and fewer cattle come to market, while meat becomes scarcer at the butcher's, and bread at the baker's.—Having thus paralyzed the lesser organs of supply and demand the Jacobins now have only to paralyze labor itself, the skilled hands, the active and vigorous arms. This is simply done by replacing the independent private workshop by the compulsory national workshop in this way replacing piece-work by work by the day, and the attentive, energetic workman who minds his business and expects to earn money in return by inattentive apathic workmen pressed into a poorly paid service but paid even when they botch the job or laze about.—This is what the Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the services of all sorts of laborers,4243"all who help handle, transport and retail produce and articles of prime necessity," "country people who usually get in the crops," and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers, carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths and the rest.—At every point of the social organism, the same principle is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an external, artificial and mechanical constraint for the inward, natural and animating stimulant, and you get nothing but an universal atrophy. Deprive people of the fruits of their labor, and yet more, force them to produce by fear, confiscate their time, their painstaking efforts and their persons, reduce them to the condition of fellahs, create in them the sentiments of fellahs, and you will have nothing but the labor and productions of fellahs, that is to say, a minimum of labor and production, and hence, insufficient supplies for sustaining a very dense population, which, multiplied through a superior and more productive civilization, will not long subsist under a barbarous, inferior and unproductive régime. When this systematic and complete expropriation terminates we see the final result of the system, no longer a dearth, but famine, famine on a large scale, and the destruction of lives by millions.—Among the Jacobins,4244some of the maddest who are clear-sighted, on account of their fury, Guffroy, Antonelle, Jean Bon Saint-André, Collot d'Herbois, foresee the consequences and accept them along with the principle. Others, who avoid seeing it, are only the more determined in the application of it. However, they all work together with all their might to aggravate the misery of which the lamentable spectacle is so vainly exposed under their eyes.