During the month of October, 1789, at Paris, after the assassination of the baker Francois, the leading murderer, who is a porter at the grain depot, declares "that he wanted to avenge the nation." It is quite probable that this declaration is sincere. In his mind, assassination is one of the forms of patriotism, and it does not take long for his way of thinking to become prevalent. In ordinary times, social and political ideas slumber in uncultured minds in the shape of vague antipathies, restrained aspirations, and fleeting desires. Behold them aroused—energetic, imperious, stubborn, and unbridled. Objection or opposition is not to be tolerated; dissent, with them, is a sure sign of treachery.—Apropos of the nonjuring priests,[3140] five hundred and twenty-seven of the National Guards of Arras write, "that no one could doubt their iniquity without being suspected of being their accomplices. . . . Should the whole town combine and express a contrary opinion, it would simply show that it is filled with enemies of the Constitution;" and forthwith, in spite of the law and the remonstrances of the authorities, they insist on the closing of the churches. At Boulogne-sur-Mer, an English vessel having shipped a quantity of poultry, game, and eggs, "the National Guards, of their own authority," go on board and remove the cargo. On the strength of this, the accommodating municipal body approves of the act, declares the cargo confiscated, orders it to be sold, and awards one-half of the proceeds to the National Guards and the other half to charitable purposes. The concession is a vain one, for the National Guards consider that one-half is too little, "insult and threaten the municipal officers," and immediately proceed to divide the booty in kind, each one going home with a share of stolen hams and chickens.[3141] The magistrates must necessarily keep quiet with the guns of those they govern pointed at them.—Sometimes, and it is generally the case, they are timid, and do not try to resist. At Douai,[3142] the municipal officers, on being summoned three times to proclaim martial law, refuse, and end by avowing that they dare not unfold the red flag: "Were we to take this course we should all be sacrificed on the spot." Neither the troops nor the National Guards, in fact, are to be relied on. In this universal state of apathy the field is open to savages, and a dealer in wheat is hung.—Sometimes the administrative corps tries to resist, but in the end it has to succumb to violence. "For more than six hours," writes one of the members of the district of Etampes,[3143] "we were closed in by bayonets leveled at us and with pistols at our breasts; and they were obliged to sign a dismissal of the troops which had arrived to protect the market. At present "we are all away from Etampes; there is no longer a district or a municipality;" almost all have handed in their resignations, or are to return for that purpose.—Sometimes, and this is the rarest case,[3144] the officials do their duty to the end, and perish. In this same town, six months later, Simoneau, the mayor, having refused to cut down the price of wheat, is beaten with iron-pointed sticks, and his corpse is riddled with balls by the murderers.—Municipal bodies must take heed how they undertake to stem the torrent; the slightest opposition will soon be at the expense of their lives. In Touraine,[3145] "as the publication of the tax-rolls takes place, riots break out against the municipal authorities; they are forced to surrender the rolls they have drawn up, and their papers are torn up." And still more, "they kill, they assassinate the municipal authorities." In that large commune men and women "beat and kick them with their fists and sabots. . . . The mayor is laid up after it, and the procureur of the commune died between nine and ten o'clock in the morning. Veteau, a municipal officer, received the last sacrament this morning;" the rest have fled, being constantly threatened with death and incendiarism. They do not, consequently, return, and "no one now will take the office of either mayor or administrator."—The outrages which the municipalities thus commit against their superiors are committed against themselves. The National Guards, the mob, the controlling faction, arrogating to themselves in the commune the same violent sovereignty which the commune pretends to exercise against the State.

I should never finish if I undertook to enumerate the outbreaks in which the magistrates are constrained to tolerate or to sanction popular usurpations, to shut up churches, to drive off or imprison priests, to suppress octrois, tax grain, and allow clerks; bakers, corn-dealers, ecclesiastics, nobles, and officers to be hung, beaten to death, or to have their throats cut. Ninety-four thick files of records in the national archives are filled with these acts of violence, and do not contain two-thirds of them. It is worth while to take in detail one case more, a special one, and one that is authentic, which serves as a specimen, and which presents a foreshortened image of France during one tranquil year. At Aix, in the month of December, 1790,[3146] in Opposition to the two Jacobin clubs, a club had been organized, had complied with all the formalities, and, like the "Club des Monarchiens" at Paris, claimed the same right of meeting as the others. But here, as at Paris, the Jacobins recognize no rights but for themselves alone, and refuse to admit their adversaries to the privileges of the law. Moreover, alarming rumors are circulated. A person who has arrived from Nice states that he had "heard that there were twenty thousand men between Turin and Nice, under the pay of the emigrants, and that at Nice a neuvaine[3147] was held in Saint Francois-de-Paule to pray God to enlighten the French." A counter-revolution is certainly under way. Some of the aristocrats have stated "with an air of triumph, that the National Guard and municipalities are a mere toy, and that this sort of thing will not last long." One of the leading members of the new club, M. de Guiraitiand, an old officer of seventy-eight years, makes speeches in public against the National Assembly, tries to enlist artisans in his party, "affects to wear a white button on his hat fastened by pins with their points jutting out," and, as it is stated, he has given to several mercers a large order for white cockades. In reality, on examination, not one is found in any shop, and all the dealers in ribbons, on being interrogated, reply that they know of no transaction of that description. But this simply proves that the culprit is a clever dissimulator, and the more dangerous because he is eager to save the country.—On the 12th of December, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the two Jacobin clubs fraternise, and pass in long procession before the place of meeting, "where some of the members, a few officers of the Lyons regiment and other individuals, are quietly engaged at play or seeing others play." The crowd hoot, but they remain quiet. The procession passes by again, and they hoot and shout, "Down with the aristocrats to the lamp post with them!" Two or three of the officers standing on the threshold of the door become irritated, and one of them, drawing his sword, threatens to strike a young man if he keeps on. Upon this the crowd cries out, "Guard! Help! An assassin!" and rushes at the officer, who withdraws into the house, exclaiming, "To arms!" His comrades, sword in hand, descend in order to defend the door; M. de Guiramand fires two pistol shots and receives a stab in the thigh. A shower of stones smashes in the windows, and the door is on the point of being burst open when several of the members of the club save themselves by taking to the roof. About a dozen others, most of them officers, form in line, penetrate the crowd with uplifted swords, strike and get struck, and escape, five of them being wounded. The municipality orders the doors and windows of the club-house to be walled up, sends the Lyons regiment away, decrees the arrest of seven officers and of M. de Guiramand, and all this in a few hours, with no other testimony than that of the conquerors.

But these prompt, vigorous and partial measures are not sufficient for the Jacobin club; other conspirators must be seized, and it is the club which designates them and goes to take them.—Three months before this, M. Pascalis, an advocate, on addressing along with some of his professional brethren the dissolved parliament, deplored the blindness of the people, "exalted by prerogatives of which they knew not the danger." A man who dared talk in this way is evidently a traitor.—There is another, M. Morellet de la Roquette, who refused to join the proscribed club. His former vassals, however, had been obliged to bring an action against him to make him accept the redemption of his feudal dues; also, six years before this, his carriage, passing along the public promenade, had run over a child; he likewise is an enemy of the people. While the municipal officers are deliberating, "a few members of the club" get together and decide that M. Pascalis and M. de la Roquette must be arrested. At eleven o'clock at night eighty trustworthy National Guards, led by the president of the club, travel a league off to seize them in their beds and lodge them in the town prison.—Zeal of this kind excites some uneasiness, and if the municipality tolerates the arrests, it is because it is desirous of preventing murder. Consequently, on the following day, December 13th, it sends to Marseilles for four hundred men of the Swiss Guard commanded by Ernest, and four hundred National Guards, adding to these the National Guard of Aix, and orders this company to protect the prison against any violence. But, along with the Marseilles National Guards, there came a lot of armed people who are volunteers of disorder. On the afternoon of the 13th the first mob strives to force the prison, and the next day, fresh squads congregate around it demanding the head of M. Pascalis. The members of the club head the riot with "a crowd of unknown men from outside the town, who give orders and carry them out." During the night the populace of Aix are tampered with, and the dikes all give way at the same moment. At the first clamors the National Guard on duty on the public promenade disband and disperse, while, as there is no signal for the assemblage of the others, notwithstanding the regulations, the general alarm is not sounded. "The largest portion of the National Guard draws off so as not to appear to authorize by its presence outrages which it has not been ordered to prevent. Peaceable Citizens are in great consternation;" each one takes to flight or shuts himself up in his house, the streets being deserted and silent. Meanwhile the prison gates are shattered with axes. The procureur-syndic of the department, who requests the commandant of the Swiss regiment to protect the prisoners, is seized, borne off, and runs the risk of losing his life. Three municipal officers in their scarves, who arrive on the ground, dare not give the order required by the commandant. At this decisive moment, when it is necessary to shed blood and kill a number of men, they obviously fear to take the responsibility; their reply is, "We have no orders to give."—An extraordinary spectacle now presents itself in this barrack courtyard surrounding the prison. On the side of the law stand eight hundred armed men, four hundred of the "Swiss" and four hundred of the National Guard of Marseilles. They are drawn up in battle array, with guns to their shoulders, with special orders repeated the evening before at three different times by the municipal district and departmental authorities and they have the sympathies of all honest people and of most of the National Guard. But the legal indispensable phrase does not pass the lips of those who by virtue of the Constitution should utter it, and a small group of convicts are found to be sovereign.—The three municipal officers are seized in their turn under the eyes of their own soldiers who remain motionless, and "with bayonets at their breasts they sign, under constraint, the order to give up M. Pascalis to the people." M. de la Roquette is likewise surrendered. "The only portion of the National Guard of Aix which was visible," that is to say, the Jacobin minority, form a circle around the gate of the prison and organize themselves into a council of war. And there they stand; at once "accusers, witnesses, judges, and executioners." A captain conducts the two victims to the public promenade where they are hung. Very soon after this old M. de Guiramand, whom the National Guard of his village have brought a prisoner to Aix, is hung in the same manner.

There is no prosecution of the assassins. The new tribunal, frightened or forestalled, has for some time back ranged itself on the popular side; its writs, consequently, are served on the oppressed, against the members of the assaulted dub. Writs of arrest, summonses to attend court, searches, seizures of correspondence, and other proceedings, rain down upon them. Three hundred witnesses are examined. Some of the arrested officers are "loaded with chains and thrust into dungeons." Henceforth the club rules, and "makes everybody tremble."[3148] "From the 23rd to the 27th of December, more than ten thousand passports are delivered at Aix." "If the emigrations continue," write the commissioners, "there will be no one left at Aix but workmen without work and with no resources. Whole streets are uninhabited. . . . . As long as such crimes can be permitted with impunity fear will drive out of this town every one who has the means of living elsewhere."—Many come back after the arrival of the commissioners, hoping to obtain justice and security through them. But, "if a prosecution is not ordered, we shall scarcely have departed from Aix when three or four hundred families will abandon it. . . . And what man in his senses would dare guarantee that each village will not soon have some one hung in it?. . . Country valets arrest their masters. . . . The expectation of impunity leads the inhabitants of villages to commit all sorts of depredations in the forests, which is very harmful in a region where woods are very scarce. They set up the most absurd and most unjust pretensions against rich proprietors, and the fatal rope is ever the interpreter and the signal of their will." There is no refuge against these outrages. "The department, the districts, the municipalities, administer only in conformity with the multiplied petitions of the club." In the sight of all, and on one solemn day, a crushing defeat has demonstrated the weakness of the government officials; and, bowed beneath the yoke of their new masters, they preserve their legal authority only on the condition that it remains at the service of the victorious party.

*****

[Footnote 3101: Festivals approving the federation of all the National Guards in France. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3102: See the address of the commune of Paris, June 5, 1790. "Let the most touching of all utterances be heard on this day (the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille), Frenchmen, we are brothers! Yes, brothers, freemen and with a country!" Roux et Buchez, VI. 275.]

[Footnote 3103: Buchez and Roux, IV. 3, 309; V. 123; VI. 274, 399.—Duvergier, Collection of Laws and Decrees. Decree of June 8 and 9, 1790.]

[Footnote 3104: For one who, like myself, has lived for years among the Moslems, the 5 daily ritual prayers all performed while turned towards Mecca, this description of the French taking of the oath, has something familiar in it. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3105: Michelet, "Histoire de la Revolution Francaise," II, 470, 474.]

[Footnote 3106: De Ferrieres, II. 91.—Albert Babeau, I. 340. (Letter addressed to the Chevalier de Poterat, July 18, 1790.)—De Dampmartin, "Evenements qui se sont passes sous mes yeux," etc., 155.]

[Footnote 3107: One may imagine the impression Taine's description made upon the thousands of political science students and others in the years after this book was printed and widely sold all over Europe. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3108: Sauzay, I. 202.]

[Footnote 3109: Albert Babeau, ib. I, 339—De Ferrieres, II, 92.]

[Footnote 3110: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453, Correspondence of M. de Bercheney, May 23, 1790.]

[Footnote 3111: "Archives Nationales," ibid, May 13, 1790. "M. de la Rifaudiere was dragged from his carriage and brought to the guard-house, which was immediately filled with people, shouting, 'To the lamp post, the aristocrat!'—The fact is this: after his having repeatedly shouted Vive le Roi et la Nation! They wanted him to shout Vive la Nation! alone, upon which he gave Vive la Nation tant qu'elle pourra."—At Blois, on the day of the Federation, a mob promenades the streets with a wooden head covered with a wig, and a placard stating that the aristocrats must be decapitated.]

[Footnote 3112: Might Freud ( 1856—1939) have been inspired, directly or indirectly, by Taine's observation? 'La Revolution' vol. I, was published in 1877 when Freud was 21 years old!! (SR.)]

[Footnote 3113: Mercure de France, the articles by Mallet du Pan (June 18th and August 16, 1791; April 14, 1792).]

[Footnote 3114: Moniteur, IV. 560. (sitting of June 5, 1790) report of M. Freteau. "These facts are attested by fifty witnesses."—Cf. The number of April 19, 1791.]

[Footnote 3115: Solon was a famous legislator who reformed Athens some 2500 years ago. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3116: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M. de Thiard, military commandant in Brittany (September, 1789), "There are in every petty village three conflicting powers, the presidial, the bourgeois militia, and the permanent committee. Each is anxious to outrank the other, and, on this occasion, a scene happened to come under my eyes at Landivisiau which might have had a bloody termination, but which turned out to be simply ridiculous. A lively dispute arose between three speakers to determine which should make the first address. They appealed to me to decide. Not to offend either of the parties, I decided that all three should speak at the same time; which decision was immediately carried out."]

[Footnote 3117: Decree of August 10-14, 1789.]

[Footnote 3118: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard, September 21, 1789. "The troops now obey the municipalities only."—Also July 30th, August 11, 1790.]

[Footnote 3119: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of 31. M. de Thiard, September 11 and 25, November 20, December 25 and 30, 1789.]

[Footnote 3120: Buchez and Roux, V.304 (April, 1790).—"Archives Nationales," Papers of the committee of Investigation, DXXIX. I (note of M. Latour-du-Pin, October 28, 1789)—? Buchez and Roux, IV. 3 (December 1, 1789); IV. 390 (February, 1790); VI. 179 (April and May, 1790).]

[Footnote 3121: Mercure de France, Report of M. Emery, sitting of July 21, 1790, Number for July 32.—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the directory of Calvados, September 26 and October 20, 1791.]

[Footnote 3122: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3207. Letter of the minister Dumouriez, June 15, 1792. Report of M. Caillard, May 29, 1792.]

[Footnote 3123: Mercure de France, No. for July, 1791 (sitting of the 6th); Nos. for November 5 and 26, 1791.]

[Footnote 3124: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," vol. I. passim.—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3257. Address of the Directory of Saone-et-Loire to the National Assembly, November 1, 1790.—F7, 3200. Letter of the Directory of Calvados, November 9, 1791.—F 7, 3195. Minutes of the meeting of the municipality of Aix, March 1, 1792 (on the events of February 26th); letter of M. Villard, President of the Directory, March 20, 1792.—F7, 3220. Extracts from the deliberations of the Directory of Gers, and a letter to the King, January 28, 1792. Letter of M. Lafitau, President of the Directory, January 30. (He was dragged along by his hair and obliged to leave the town.)]

[Footnote 3125: Mercure de France, No. for October 30, 1790.]

[Footnote 3126: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3226. Letter of the directory of Indre to M. Cahier, minister, December 6, 1791.—Letter of M. Delessart, minister, to the directory of Indre, December 31, 1791.]

[Footnote 3127: Fabre, "Histoire de Marseille," II. 442. Martin had but 3,555 votes, when shortly after the National Guard numbered 24,000 men.]

[Footnote 3128: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of the minister, M. de Saint-Priest, to the President of the National Assembly, May 11, 1790.]

[Footnote 3129: "Archives Nationales," F7 3196. Letters of the military commandant, M. de Miran, March 6, 14, 30, 1790.]

[Footnote 3130: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of M. de Bournissac, grand-privot, March 6,1790.]

[Footnote 3131: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letters of M. du Miran, April 11th and 16th, and May 1, 1790.]

[Footnote 3132: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Proces-verbal of events on the 30th of April.]

[Footnote 3133: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letters of the Municipality of Marseilles to the National Assembly, May 5 and 20, 1790.]

[Footnote 3134: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Order of the king, May10. Letter of M. de Saint-Priest to the National Assembly, May 11. Decree of the National Assembly, May 12. Letter of the Municipality to the King. May 20. Letter of M. de Rubum, May 20. Note sent from Marseilles, May 31. Address of the Municipality to the President of the Friends of the Constitution, at Paris, May 5. In his narration of the taking of the forts we read the following sentence: "We arrived without hindrance in the presence of the commandant, whom we brought to an agreement by means of the influence which force, fear and reason give to persuasion."]

[Footnote 3135: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196, Letter of M. de Miran, May 5.—The spirit of the ruling party at Marseilles is indicated by several printed documents joined to the dossier, and, among others, by a "Requete a Desmoulins, procureur-general de la Lanterne." It relates to a "patriotic inkstand," recently made out of the stones of the demolished citadel, representing a hydra with four heads, symbolizing the nobility, the clergy, the ministry and the judges. "It is from the four patriotic skulls of the hydra that the ink of proscription will be taken for the enemies of the Constitution. This inkstand, cut out of the first stone that fell in the demolition of Fort Saint-Nicolas, is dedicated to the patriotic Assembly of Marseilles. The magic art of the hero of the liberty of Marseilles, that Renaud who, under the mask of devotion, surprised the watchful sentinel of Notre-Dame de la Garde, and whose manly courage and cunning ensured the conquest of that key of the great focus of counter-revolution, has just given birth to a new trait of genius a new Deucalion, he personifies this stone which Liberty has flung from the summit of our menacing Bastilles, etc."]

[Footnote 3136: "Archives Nationales," F7. 3198. Letters of the royal commissioners, April 13 and 5, 1791.]

[Footnote 3137: De Segur, "Memoires," III, 482 (early in 1790).]

[Footnote 3138: De Dampmartin, I. 184 (January, 1791).]

[Footnote 3139: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of M. de Thiard (October 12, 1789).]

[Footnote 3140: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Minutes from the meeting of the directory of the department. March 28, 1792. "As the ferment was at the highest point and fears were entertained that greater evils would follow, M. le President, with painful emotion declared that he yielded and passed the unconstitutional act." Reply of the minister, June 23: "If the constituted authorities are thus forced to yield to the arbitrary will of a wild multitude, government no longer exists and we are in the saddest stage of anarchy. If you think it best I will propose to the King to reverse your last decision."]

[Footnote 3141: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Letter of M. Duport, minister of justice, December 24, 1791.]

[Footnote 3142: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248, Report of the members of the department, finished March 18, 1792.—Buchez and Roux, IX. 240 (Report of M. Alquier).]

[Footnote 3143: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Extract from the deliberations of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, with the documents relating to the insurrection at Etampes, September 16, 1791. Letter of M. Venard, administrator of the district, September 20—" I shall not set foot in Etampes until the re-establishment of order and tranquility, and the first thing I shall do will be to record my resignation in the register. I am tired of making sacrifices, for ungrateful wretches."]

[Footnote 3144: Moniteur, March 16, 1792.—Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de la Terreur" (Proceedings against the assassins of Simoneau), I. 381.]

[Footnote 3145: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3226. Letter and memorandum of Chenantin, cultivator, November 7, 1792. Extract from the deliberations of the directory of Langeais, November 5, 1792 (sedition at Chapelle-Blanche, near Langeais, October 5, 1792).]

[Footnote 3146: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3105. Report of the commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the King, February 23, 1791. (On the events of December 12 and 14, 1790)—Mercure de France, February 29, 5791. (Letters from Aix, and notably a letter from seven officers shut up in prison at Aix, January 30, 1791.) The oldest Jacobin Club formed in February, 1790, was entitled "(Club des vrais amis de la Constitution.)" The second Jacobin club, formed in October, 1790, was "composed from the beginning of artisans and laborers from the faubourgs and suburbs." Its title was" Societe des freres anti-politiques," or "freres vrais, justes et utiles a la patrie." The opposition club, formed in December, 1790, bore the title, according to some, of "Les Amis du Roi, de la paix et de la religion;" according to others, "Les amis de la paix;" and finally, according to another report, "Les Defenseurs de la religion, des personnes et des proprietes."]

[Footnote 3147: A special series of religious services. (TR)]

[Footnote 3148: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letters of the commissioners, March 20, February 11, May 10, 1791.]



CHAPTER II. SOVEREIGNTY OF UNRESTRAINED PASSIONS.

Under these conditions when passions are freed; any determined and competent man who can gather a couple of hundred men may form a band and slip through the enlarged or weakened meshes of the net held by the passive or ineffective government. An experiment on a grand scale is about to be made on human society; owing to the slackening of the regular restraints which have maintained it, it is now possible to measure the force of the permanent instincts which attack it. They are always there even in ordinary times; we do not notice them because they are kept in check; but they are not the less energetic and effective, and, moreover, indestructible. The moment their repression ceases, their power of mischief becomes evident; just as that of the water which floats a ship, but which, at the first leak enters into it and sinks it.



I.—Old Religious Grudges

Montauban and Nimes in 1790.

Religious passions, to begin with, are not to be kept down by federations, embraces, and effusions of fraternity. In the south, where the Protestants have been persecuted for more than a century, hatreds exist more than a century old.[3201] In vain have the odious edicts which oppressed them fallen into desuetude for the past twenty years; in vain have civil rights been restored to them since 1787: The past still lives in transmitted recollections; and two groups are confronting each other, one Protestant and the other Catholic, each defiant, hostile, ready to act on the defensive, and interpreting the preparations of its adversary as a plan of attack. Under such circumstances the guns go off of their own accord.—On a sudden alarm at Uzes[3202] the Catholics, two thousand in number, take possession of the bishop's palace and the Hotel-de-Ville; while the Protestants, numbering four hundred, assemble outside the walls on the esplanade, and pass the night under arms, each troop persuaded that the other is going to massacre it, one party summoning the Catholics of Jales to its aid, and the other the Protestants of Gardonnenque.—There is but one way of avoiding civil war between parties in such an attitude, and that is the ascendancy of an energetic third party, impartial and on the spot. A plan to this effect, which promises well, is proposed by the military commandant of Languedoc.[3203] According to him the two firebrands are, on the one hand, the bishops of Lower Languedoc, and on the other, MM. Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, father and two sons, all three being pastors. Let them be responsible "with their heads" for any mob, insurrection, or attempt to debauch the army; let a tribunal of twelve judges be selected from the municipal bodies of twelve towns, and all delinquents be brought before it; let this be the court of final appeal, and its sentence immediately executed. The system in vogue, however, is just the reverse. Both parties being organized into a body of militia, each takes care of itself, and is sure to fire on the other; and the more readily, inasmuch as the new ecclesiastical regulations, which are issued from month to month, strike like so many hammers on Catholic sensibility, and scatter showers of sparks on the primings of the already loaded guns.

At Montauban, on the 10th of May, 1790, the day of the inventory and expropriation of the religious communities,[3204] the commissioners are not allowed to enter. Women in a state of frenzy lie across the thresholds of the doors, and it would be necessary to pass over their bodies; a large mob gathers around the "Cordeliers," and a petition is signed to have the convents maintained.—The Protestants who witness this commotion become alarmed, and eighty of their National Guards march to the Hotel-de-Ville, and take forcible possession of the guard-house which protects it. The municipal authorities order them to withdraw, which they refuse to do. Thereupon the Catholics assembled at the "Cordeliers" begin a riot, throw stones, and drive in the doors with pieces of timber, while a cry is heard that the Protestants, who have taken refuge in the guard-house, are firing from the windows. The enraged multitude immediately invade the arsenal, seize all the guns they can lay their hands on, and fire volleys on the guard-house, the effect of which is to kill five of the Protestants and wound twenty-four others. The rest are saved by a municipal officer and the police; but they are obliged to appear, two and two, before the cathedral in their shirts, and do public penance, after which they are put in prison. During the tumult political shouts have been heard: "Hurrah for the nobles! Hurrah for the aristocracy! Down with the nation! Down with the tricolor flag!" Bordeaux, regarding Montauban as in rebellion against France, dispatches fifteen hundred of its National Guard to set the prisoners free. Toulouse gives its aid to Bordeaux. The fermentation is frightful. Four thousand of the Protestants of Montauban take flight; armed cities are about to contend with each other, as formerly in Italy. It is necessary that a commissioner of the National Assembly and of the King, Mathieu Dumas, should be dispatched to harangue the people of Montauban, obtain the release of the prisoners, and re-establish order.

One month after this a more bloody affray takes place at Nimes[3205] against the Catholics. The Protestants, in fact, are but twelve thousand out of fifty-four thousand inhabitants, but the principal trade of the place is in their hands; they hold the manufactories and support thirty thousand workmen; in the elections of 1789 they furnished five out of the eight deputies. The sympathies of that time were in their favor; nobody then imagined that the dominant Church was exposed to any risk. It is to be attacked in its turn, and the two parties are seen confronting each other.—The Catholics sign a petition,[3206] hunt up recruits among the market-gardeners of the suburbs, retain the white cockade, and, when this is prohibited, replace it with a red rosette, another sign of recognition. At their head is an energetic man named Froment, who has vast projects in view; but as the soil on which he treads is undermined, he cannot prevent the explosion. It takes place naturally, by chance, through the simple collision of two equally distrustful bodies; and before the final day it has commenced and recommenced twenty times, through mutual provocations and denunciations, through insults, libels, scuffles, stone-throwing, and gun-shots.—On the 13th of June, 1790, the question is which party shall furnish administrators for the district and department, and the conflict begins in relation to the elections. The Electoral Assembly is held at the guard-house of the bishop's palace, where the Protestant dragoons and patriots have come "three times as many as usual, with loaded muskets and pistols, and with full cartridge-boxes," and they patrol the surrounding neighborhood. On their side, the red rosettes, royalists and Catholics, complain of being threatened and "treated contemptuously" (nargues). They give notice to the gate-keeper "not to let any dragoon enter the town either on foot or mounted, at the peril of his life," and declare that "the bishop's quarters were not made for a guard-house."—A mob forms, and shouting takes place under the windows; stones are thrown; the bugle of a dragoon, who sounds the roll-call, is broken and two shots are fired.[3207] The dragoons immediately fire a volley, which wounds a good many people and kills seven. From this moment, firing goes on during the evening and all night, in every quarter of the town, each party believing that the other wants to exterminate it, the Protestants satisfied that it is another St. Bartholomew, and the Catholics that it is "a Michelade."[3208] There is no one to act between them. The municipality authorities, far from issuing orders, receive them: they are roughly handled, hustled and jostled about, and made to march about like servants. The patriots seize the Abbe de Belmont, a municipal officer, at the Hotel-de-Ville, order him, on pain of death, to proclaim martial—law, and place the red flag in his hand. "March, rascal, you bastard! Hold up your flag—higher up still—you are big enough to do that!" Blows follow with the but-ends of their muskets. The poor man spits blood, but this is of no consequence; he must be in full sight at the head of the crowd, like a target, whilst his conductors prudently remain behind. Thus does he advance, exposed to bullets, holding the flag, and finally becomes the prisoner of the red rosettes, who release him, but keep his flag. There is a second march with a red flag held by a town valet, and fresh gunshots; the red rosettes capture this flag also, as well as another municipal officer. The rest of the municipal body, with a royal commissioner, take refuge in the barracks and order out the troops. Meanwhile Froment, with his three companies, posted in their towers and in the houses on the ramparts, resist to the last extremity. Daylight comes, the tocsin is sounded, the drums beat to arms, and the patriot militia of the neighborhood, the Protestants from the mountains, the rude Cevenols, arrive in crowds. The red rosettes are besieged; a Capuchin convent, from which it is pretended that they have fired, is sacked, and five of the monks are killed. Froment's tower is demolished with cannon and taken by assault. His brother is massacred and thrown from the walls, while a Jacobin convent next to the ramparts is sacked. Towards night, all the red rosettes who have fought are slain or have fled, and there is no longer any resistance.—But the fury still lasts; the fifteen thousand rustics who have flooded the town think that they have not yet done enough. In vain are they told that the other fifteen companies of red rosettes have not moved; that the pretended aggressors "did not even put themselves in a state of defense;" that during the battle they remained at home, and that afterwards, through extra precaution, the municipal authorities had made them give up their arms. In vain does the Electoral Assembly, preceded by a white flag, march to the public square and exhort the people to keep the peace. "Under the pretext of searching suspicious houses, they pillage or destroy, and what-ever cannot be carried away is broken." One hundred and twenty houses are sacked in Nimes alone, while the same ravages are committed in the environs, the damage, at the end of three days, amounting to seven or eight hundred thousand livres. A number of poor creatures, workmen, merchants, old and infirm men, are massacred in their houses; some, "who have been bedridden for many years, are dragged to the sills of their doors to be shot." Others are hung on the esplanade and at the Cours Neuf, while others have their noses, ears, feet, and hands cut off; and are hacked to pieces with sabers and scythes. Horrible stories, as is commonly the case, provoke the most atrocious acts.

A publican, who refuses to distribute anti-Catholic lists, is supposed to have a mine in his cellar filled with kegs of gunpowder and with sulfur matches all ready; he is hacked to pieces with a saber, and twenty guns are discharged into his corpse: they expose the body before his house with a long loaf of bread on his breast, and they again stab him with bayonets, saying to him: "Eat, you bastard, eat"—More than five hundred Catholics were assassinated, and many others, covered with blood, "are crowded together in the prisons, while the search for the proscribed is continued; whenever they are seen, they are fired upon like so many wolves." Thousands of the inhabitants, accordingly, demand their passports and leave the town. The rural Catholics, meanwhile, on their side, massacre six Protestants in the environs—an old man of eighty-two years, a youth of fifteen, and a husband and his wife in their farm-house. In order to put a stop to the murderous acts, the National Guard of Montpellier have to be summoned. But the restoration of order is for the benefit of the victorious party. Three-fifths of the electors have fled; one-third of the district and departmental administrators have been appointed in their absence, and the majority of the new directories is taken from the club of patriots. It is for this reason that the prisoners are prejudged as guilty. "No bailiff of the court dares give them the benefit of his services; they are not allowed to bring forward justifying facts in evidence, while everybody knows that the judges are not impartial."[3209]

Thus do the violent measures of political and religious discord come to an end. The victor stops the mouth of the law when it is about to speak in his adversary's behalf; and, under the legal iniquity of an administration which he has himself established, he crushes those whom the illegal force of his own strong hand has stricken down.



II.—Passion Supreme.

Dread of hunger its most acute form.—The non-circulation of grain.—Intervention and usurpations of the electoral assemblies.—The rural code in Nivernais.—The four central provinces in 1790.—Why high prices are kept up.—Anxiety and insecurity.—Stagnation of the grain market.—The departments near Paris in 1791.—The supply and price of grain regulated by force.—The mobs in 1792.—Village armies of Eure and of the lower Seine and of Aisne.—Aggravation of the disorder after August 10th.—The dictatorship of unbridled instinct.—Its practical and political expedients.

Passions of this stamp are the product of human cultivation, and break loose only within narrow bounds. Another passion exists which is neither historic nor local, but natural and universal, the most indomitable, most imperious, and most formidable of all, namely, the fear of hunger. There is no such thing with this passion as delay, or reflection, or looking beyond itself. Each commune or canton wants its bread, and a sure and unlimited supply of it. Our neighbor may provide for himself as best he can, but let us look out for ourselves first and then for other people. Each group of people, accordingly, through its own decrees, or by main force, keeps for itself whatever subsistence it possesses, or takes from others the subsistence which it does not possess. ii

At the end of 1789,[3210] "Roussillon refuses aid to Languedoc; Upper Languedoc to the rest of the province, and Burgundy to Lyonnais; Dauphiny shuts herself up, and Normandy retains the wheat purchased for the relief of Paris." At Paris, sentinels are posted at the doors of all the bakers; on the 21st of October one of the latter is hung, and his head is borne about on a pike. On the 27th of October, at Vernon, a corn-merchant named Planter, who the preceding winter had supported the poor for six leagues around, has to take his turn. At the present moment the people do not forgive him for having sent flour to Paris, and he is hung twice, but is saved through the breaking of the rope each time.—It is only by force and under an escort that it is possible to insure the arrival of grain in a town; the excited people or the National Guards constantly seize it on its passage. In Normandy the militia of Caen stops wheat on the highways which is destined for Harcourt and elsewhere.[3211] In Brittany, Auray and Vannes retain the convoys for Nantes, and Lannion those for Brest. Brest having attempted to negotiate, its commissioners are seized, and, with knives at their throats, are forced to sign a renunciation, pure and simple, of the grain which they have paid for, and they are led out of Lannion and stoned on the way. Eighteen hundred men, consequently, leave Brest with four cannon, and go to recover their property with their guns loaded. These are the customs prevalent during the great famines of feudal times; and, from one end of France to the other, to say nothing of the out-breaks of the famished in the large towns, similar outrages or attempts at recovery are constantly occurring.—" The armed population of Nantua, Saint-Claude, and Septmoncel," says a dispatch,[3212] "have again cut off provisions from the Gex region; there is no wheat coming there from any direction, all the roads being guarded. Without the aid of the government of Geneva, which is willing to lend to this region eight hundred Cuttings of wheat, we should either die of starvation or be compelled to take grain by force from the municipalities which keep it to themselves." Narbonne starves Toulon; the navigation of the Languedoc canal is intercepted; the people on its banks repulse two companies of soldiers, burn a large building, and want to destroy the canal itself." Boats are stopped, wagons are pillaged, bread is forcibly lowered in price, stones are thrown and guns discharged; the populace contend with the National Guard, peasants with townsmen, purchasers with dealers, artisans and laborers with farmers and land-owners, at Castelnaudary, Niort, Saint-Etienne, in Aisne, in Pas-de-Calais, and especially along the line stretching from Montbrison to Angers—that is to say, for almost the whole of the extent of the vast basin of the Loire,—such is the spectacle presented by the year 1790.—And yet the crop has not been a bad one. But there is no circulation of grain. Each petty center has formed a league for the monopoly of food; and hence the fasting of others and the convulsions of the entire body are the first effects of the unbridled freedom which the Constitution and circumstances have conferred on each local group.

"We are told to assemble, vote, and elect men that will attend to our business; let us attend to it ourselves. We have had enough of talk and hypocrisy. Bread at two sous, and let us go after wheat where it can be found!" Such is the reasoning of the peasantry, and, in Nivernais, Bourbonnais, Berri, and Touraine, electoral gatherings are the firebrands of the insurrections.[3213] At Saint-Sauge, "the first work of the primary meeting is to oblige the municipal officers to fix the price of wheat under the penalty of being decapitated." At Saint-Geran the same course is taken with regard to bread, wheat, and meat; at Chatillon-en-Bayait it is done with all supplies, and always a third or a half under the market price, without mentioning other exactions.—They come by degrees to the drafting of a tariff for all the valuables they know, proclaiming the maximum price which an article may reach, and so establishing a complete code of rural and social economy. We see in the turbulent and spasmodic wording of this instrument their dispositions and sentiments, as in a mirror.[3214] It is the program of villagers. Its diverse articles, save local variations, must be executed, now one and now the other, according to the occasion, the need, and the time, and, above all, whatever concerns provisions.—The wish, as usual, is the father of the thought; the peasantry thinks that it is acting by authority: here, through a decree of the King and the National Assembly, there, by a commission directly entrusted to the Comte d'Estrees. Even before this, in the market-place of Saint-Amand, "a man jumped on a heap of wheat and cried out, 'In the name of the King and the nation, wheat at one-half the market-price!"' An old officer of the Royal Grenadiers, a chevalier of the order of Saint-Louis, is reported to be marching at the head of several parishes, and promulgating ordinances in his own name and that of the King, imposing a fine of eight livres on whoever may refuse to join him.—On all sides there is a swarm of working people, and resistance is fruitless. There are too many of them, the constabulary being drowned in the flood. For, these rustic legislators are the National Guard itself, and when they vote reductions upon, or requisitions for, supplies, they enforce their demands with their guns. The municipal officials, willingly or unwillingly, must needs serve the insurgents. At Donjon the Electoral Assembly has seized the mayor of the place and threatened to kill him, or to burn his house, if he did not put the cutting of wheat at forty sous; whereupon he signs, and all the mayors with him, "under the penalty of death." As soon as this is done the peasants, "to the sound of fifes and drums," spread through the neighboring parishes and force the delivery of wheat at forty sous, and show such a determined spirit that the four brigades of gendarmes sent out against them think it best to retire.—Not content with taking what they want, they provide for reserve supplies; wheat is a prisoner. In Nivernais and Bourbonnais, the peasants trace a boundary line over which no sack of grain of that region must pass; in case of any infraction of this law the rope and the torch are close at hand for the delinquent.—It remains to make sure that this rule is enforced. In Berri bands of peasants visit the markets to see that their tariff is everywhere maintained. In vain are they told that they are emptying the markets; "they reply that they know how to make grain come, that they will take it from private hands, and money besides, if necessary." In fact, the granaries and cellars belonging to a large number of persons are pillaged. Farmers are constrained to put their crops into a common granary, and the rich are put to ransom; "the nobles are compelled to contribute, and obliged to give entire domains as donations; cattle are carried off; and they want to take the lives of the proprietors," while the towns, which defend their storehouses and markets, are openly attacked.[3215] Bourbon-Lancy, Bourbon-l'Archambault, Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, Montlucon, Saint-Amand, Chateau-Gontier, Decises, each petty community is an islet assailed by the mounting tide of rustic insurrection. The militia pass the night under arms; detachments of the National Guards of the large towns with regular troops come and garrison them. The red flag is continuously raised for eight days at Bourbon-Lancy, and cannon stand loaded and pointed in the public square. On the 24th of May an attack is made on Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, and fusillades take place all night on both sides. On the 2nd of June, Saint-Amand, menaced by twenty-seven parishes, is saved only by the preparations it makes and by the garrison. About the same time Bourbon-Lancy is attacked by twelve parishes combined, and Chateau-Gontier by the sabotiers of the forests in the vicinity. A band of from four to five hundred villagers arrests the convoys of Saint-Amand, and forces their escorts to capitulate; another band entrenches itself in the Chateau de la Fin, and fires throughout the day on the regulars and the National Guard.—The large towns themselves are not safe. Three or four hundred rustics, led by their municipal officers, forcibly enter Tours, to compel the municipality to lower the price of corn and diminish the rate of leases. Two thousand slate-quarry-men, armed with guns, spits, and forks, force their way into Angers to obtain a reduction on bread, fire upon the guard, and are charged by the troops and the National Guard; a number remain dead in the streets, two are hung that very evening, and the red flag is displayed for eight days. "The town," say the dispatches, "would have been pillaged and burnt had it not been for the Picardy regiment." Fortunately, as the crop promises to be a good one, prices fall. As the Electoral Assemblies are closed, the fermentation subsides; and towards the end of the year, like a clear spell in a steady storm, the gleam of a truce appears in the civil war excited by hunger.

But the truce does not last long, as it is broken in twenty places by isolated explosions; and towards the month of July, 1791, the disturbances arising from the uncertainty of basic food supplies begin again, to cease no more. We will consider but one group in this universal state of disorder—that of the eight or ten departments which surround Paris and furnish it with supplies. These districts, Brie and Beauce, are rich wheat regions, and not only was the crop of 1790 good, but that of 1791 is ample. Information is sent to the minister from Laon[3216] that, in the department of Aisne, "there is a supply of wheat for two years. . . that the barns, generally empty by the month of April, will not be so this season before July," and, consequently, "subsistence is assured." But this does not suffice, for the source of the evil is not in a scarcity of wheat. In order that everybody, in a vast and populous country, where the soil, cultivation, and occupations differ, may eat, it is essential that food should be attainable by the non-producers; and for it to reach them freely, without delay, solely by the natural operation of supply and demand, it is essential that there should be a police able to protect property, transactions, and transport. Just in proportion as the authority of a State becomes weakened, and in proportion as security diminishes, the distribution of subsistence becomes more and more difficult: a gendarmerie, therefore, is an indispensable wheel in the machine by which we are able to secure our daily bread. Hence it is that, in 1791, daily bread is wanting to a large number of men. Simply through the working of the Constitution, all restraints, already slackened both at the extremities and at the center, are becoming looser and more loose each day. The municipalities, which are really sovereign, repress the people more feebly, some because the latter are the bolder and themselves more timid, and others because they are more radical and always consider them in the right. The National Guard is wearied, never comes forward, or refuses to use its arms. The active citizens are disgusted, and remain at home. At Etampes,[3217] where they are convoked by the commissioners of the department to take steps to re-establish some kind of order, only twenty assemble; the others excuse themselves by saying that, if the populace knew that they opposed its will, "their houses would be burnt," and they accordingly stay away. "Thus," write the commissioners, "the common-weal is given up to artisans and laborers whose views are limited to their own existence."—It is, accordingly, the lower class which rules, and the information upon which it bases its decrees consists of rumors which it accepts or manufactures, to hide by an appearance of right the outrages which are due to its cupidity or to the brutalities of its hunger. At Etampes, "they have been made to believe that the grain which had been sold for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped at Paimboeuf and taken out of the kingdom from there to be sold abroad." In the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely "engulfed in the swamps, ponds, and clay-pits." At Laon, imbecile and Jacobin committees attribute the dearness of provisions to the avidity of the rich and the malevolence of the aristocrats according to them, "jealous millionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. They know the popular strength," and, not daring to measure their forces with it, "in an honorable fight," have recourse "to treachery." To conquer the people easily they have determined to reduce them in advance by extreme suffering and by the length of their fast, and hence they monopolize "wheat, rye, and meal, soap, sugar, and brandy."[3218]—Similar reports suffice to excite a suffering crowd to acts of violence, and it must inevitably accept for its leaders and advisers those who urge it forward on the side to which it is inclined. The people always require leaders, and they are chosen wherever they can be found, at one time amongst the elite, and at another amongst the dregs. Now that the nobles are driven out, the bourgeoisie in retirement, the large cultivators under suspicion, while animal necessities exercise their blind and intermittent despotism, the appropriate popular ministers consist of adventurers and of bandits. They need not be very numerous, for in a place full of combustible matter a few firebrands suffice to start the conflagration. "About twenty, at most, can be counted in the towns of Etampes and Dourdan, men with nothing to lose and everything to gain by disturbances; they are those who always produce excitement and disorder, while other citizens afford them the means through their indifference." Those whose names are known among the new guides of the crowd are almost all escaped convicts whose previous habits have accustomed them to blows, violence, frequently to murder, and always to contempt for the law. At Brunoy,[3219] the leaders of the outbreak are "two deserters of the 18th regiment, sentenced and unpunished, who, in company with the vilest and most desperate of the parish, always go about armed and threatening." At Etampes, "the two principal assassins of the mayor are a poacher repeatedly condemned for poaching, and an old carabiniere dismissed from his regiment with a bad record against him."[3220] Around these are artisans "without a known residence," wandering workmen, journeymen and apprentices, vagrants and highway rovers, who flock into the towns on market-days and are always—ready for mischief when an opportunity occurs. Vagabonds, indeed, now roam about the country everywhere, all restrictions against them having ceased.

"For a year past," write several parishes in the neighborhood of Versailles, "we have seen no gendarmes except those who come with decrees," and hence the multiplication of "murders and brigandage" between Etampes and Versailles, on the highways and in the country. Bands of thirteen, fifteen, twenty and twenty-two beggars rob the vineyards, enter farm-houses at night, and compel their inmates to lodge and feed them, returning in the same way every fortnight, all farms or isolated dwellings being their prey. An ecclesiastic is killed in his own house in the suburbs of Versailles, on the 26th of September, 1791, and, on the same day, a bourgeois and his wife are garroted and robbed. On the 22nd of September, near Saint-Remi-Honore, eight bandits ransack the dwelling of a farmer. On the 25th of September, at Villers-le-Sec, thirteen others strip another farmer, and then add with much politeness, "It is lucky for your masters that they are not here, for we would have roasted them at yonder fire." Six similar outrages are committed by armed ruffians in dwelling-places, within a radius of from three to four leagues, accompanied with the threats of the chauffeurs.[3221] "After enterprises of such force and boldness," write the people of this region, "there is not a well-to-do man in the country who can rely upon an hour's security in his house. Already many of our best cultivators are giving up their business, while others threaten to do the same in case these disorders continue."—What is worse still is the fact that in these outrages most of the bandits were "in the national uniform." The most ignorant, the poorest, and most fanatical of the National Guard thus enlist for the sake of plunder. It is so natural for men to believe in their right to that of which they feel the need, that the possessors of wheat thus become its monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate the forest of Bruyeres-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, nor work—necessity knows no law."

The necessaries of life are not to be had cheap under such a system. There is too much anxiety, and property is too precarious; there are too many obstacles to commerce; purchases, sales, shipments, arrivals and payments are too uncertain. How are goods to be stored and transported in a country where neither the central government, the local authorities, the National Guard, nor the regular troops perform their duties, and where every transaction in produce, even the most legal and the most serviceable, is subject to the caprice of a dozen villains whom the populace obey.—Wheat remains in the barn, or is secreted, or is kept waiting, and only reaches by stealth the hands of those who are rich enough to pay, not only its price, but the extra cost of the risk. Thus forced into a narrow channel, it rises to a rate which the depreciation of the assignats augments, its dearness being not only maintained, but ever on the increase.—Thereupon popular instinct invents for the cure of the evil a remedy which serves to aggravate it: henceforth, wheat must not travel; it is impounded in the canton in which it is gathered. At Laon, "the people have sworn to die rather than let their food be carried off." At Etampes, to which the municipality of Angers dispatches an administrator of its hospital to buy two hundred and fifty sacks of flour, the commission cannot be executed, the delegate not even daring to avow for several days the object of his coming; all he can do is "to visit incognito, and at night, the different flour-dealers in the valley, who would offer to furnish the supply, but fear for their lives and dare not even leave their houses."—The same violence is shown in the more distant circle of departments which surround the first circle. At Aubigny, in Cher,[3222] grain-wagons are stopped, the district administrators are menaced; two have a price set on their heads; a portion of the National Guard sides with the mutineers. At Chaumont, in Haute-Marne, the whole of the National Guard is in a state of mutiny; a convoy of over three hundred sacks is stopped, the Hotel-de-Ville forced, and the insurrection lasts four days; the directory of the department takes flight; and the people seize on the powder and cannons. At Douai, in the "Nord," to save a grain-dealer, he is put in prison; the mob forces the gates, the soldiers refuse to fire, and the man is hung, while the directory of the department takes refuge in Lille. At Montreuil-sur-Mer, in Pas-de-Calais, the two leaders of the insurrection, a brazier and a horse-shoer, "Bequelin, called Petit-Gueux," the latter with his saber in hand, reply to the summons of the municipal authorities, that "not a grain shall go now that they are masters," and that if they dare to make such proclamations "they will cut off their heads." There are no means of resistance. The National Guard, when it is convoked, does not respond; the volunteers when called upon turn their muskets down, and the crowd, assembled beneath the windows, shouts out its huzzahs. So much the worse for the law when it opposes popular passion: "We will not obey it," they say; "people make laws to please themselves."—By way of practical illustration, at Tortes, in Seine-Inferieure, six thousand armed men belonging to the surrounding parishes form a deliberative armed body; the better to establish their rights, they bring two cannon with them fastened by ropes on a couple of carts; twenty-two companies of the National Guard, each under its own banner, march beside them, while all peaceable inhabitants are compelled to fall in "under penalty of death," the municipal officers being at their head. This improvised parliament promulgates a complete law in relation to grain, which, as a matter of form, is sent for acceptance to the department, and to the National Assembly; and one of its articles declares that all husbandmen shall be forbidden "to sell their wheat elsewhere than on the market-places." With no other outlet for it, wheat must be brought to the corn markets (halles), and when these are full the price must necessarily fall.

What a profound deception! Even in the granary of France wheat remains dear, and costs about one-third more than would be necessary to secure the sale of bread at two sous the pound, in conformity with the will of the people. For instance,[3223] at Gonesse, Dourdan, Corbeil, Mennecy, Brunoy, Limours, Brie-Comte-Robert, and especially at Etampes and Montlhery, the holders of grain are compelled almost weekly, through the clamors and violence of the people, to reduce prices one-third and more. It is impossible for the authorities to maintain, on their corn-exchange, the freedom of buying and selling. The regular troops have been sent off by the people beforehand. Whatever the tolerance or connivance of the soldiers may be, the people have a vague sentiment that they are not there to permit the ripping open of sacks of flour, or the seizing of farmers by the throat. To get rid of all obstacles and of being watched, they make use of the municipality itself, and force it to effect its own disarmament. The municipal officers, besieged in the town-hall, at times threatened with pistols and bayonets,[3224] dispatch to the detachments they are expecting an order to turn back, and entreat the Directory not to send any more troops, for, if any come, they have been told that "they will be sorry for it." Nowhere are there regular troops. At Etampes, the people repeat that "they are sent for and paid by the flour-dealers;" at Montlhery, that "they merely serve to arm citizens against each other;" at Limours, that "they make grain dearer." All pretexts seem good in this direction; the popular will is absolute, and the authorities complacently meet its decrees half-way. At Montlhery, the municipal body orders the gendarmerie to remain at the gates of the town, which gives full play to the insurrection.—The administrators, however, are not relieved by leaving the people free to act; they are obliged to sanction their exactions by ordinances. They are taken out of the Hotel-de-Ville, led to the marketplace, and there forthwith, under the dictation of the uproar which establishes prices, they, like simple clerks, proclaim the reduction. When, moreover, the armed rabble of a village marches forth to tyrannize over a neighboring market, it carries its mayor along with it in spite of himself, as an official instrument which belongs to it.[3225] "There is no resistance against force," writes the mayor of Vert-le-Petit; "we had to set forth immediately."—" They assured me," says the Mayor of Fontenay, "that, if I did not obey them, they would hang me."—On any municipal officer hazarding a remonstrance, they tell him that "he is getting to be an aristocrat." Aristocrat and hung, the argument is irresistible, and all the more so because it is actually applied. At Corbeil, the procureur-syndic who tries to enforce the law is almost beaten to death, and three houses in which they try to find him are demolished. At Montlhery, a seed merchant, accused of mixing the flour of beans (twice as dear) with wheaten flour, is massacred in his own house. At Etampes, the mayor who promulgates the law is cudgeled to death. Mobs talk of nothing but "burning and destroying," while the farmers, abused, hooted at, forced to sell, threatened with death and robbed, run away, declaring they will never return to the market again.

Such is the first effect of popular dictatorship. Like all unintelligent forces, it operates in a direction the reverse of its intention: to dearness it adds dearth, and empties, instead of replenishing, the markets. That of Etampes often contained fifteen or sixteen hundred sacks of flour; the week following this insurrection there were, at most, sixty brought to it. At Montlhery, where six thousand men had collected together, each one obtains for his share only a small measure, while the bakers of the town have none at all. This being the case, the enraged National Guards tell the farmers that they are coming to see them on their farms. And they really go.[3226] Drums roll constantly on the roads around Montlhery, Limours, and other large market-towns. Columns of two, three, and four hundred men are seen passing under the lead of their commandant and of the mayor whom they take along with them. They enter each farm, mount into the granaries, estimate the quantity of grain thrashed out, and force the proprietor to sign an agreement to bring it to market the following week. Sometimes, as they are hungry, they compel people to give them something to eat and drink on the spot, and it will not do to enrage them,—a farmer and his wife come near being hung in their own barn.

Their effort is useless: Wheat is impounded and hunted up in vain; it takes to the earth or slips off like a frightened animal. In vain do insurrections continue. In vain do armed mobs, in all the market-towns of the department,[3227] subject grain to a forced reduction of price. Wheat becomes scarcer and dearer from month to month, rising in price from twenty-six francs to thirty-three. And because the outraged farmer "brings now a very little," just "what is necessary to sacrifice in order to avoid threats, he sells at home, or in the inns, to the flour-dealers from Paris."—The people, in running after abundance, have thus fallen deeper down into want: their brutality has aggravated their misery, and it is to themselves that their starvation is owing. But they are far from attributing all this to their own insubordination; the magistrates are accused; these, in the eyes of the populace, are "in league with the monopolists." On this incline no stoppage is possible. Distress increases rage, and rage increases distress; and on this fatal declivity men are precipitated from one outrage to another.

After the month of February, 1792, such outrages are innumerable; the mobs which go in quest of grain or which cut down its price consist of armies. One of six thousand men comes to control the market of Montlhery.[3228] There are seven to eight—thousand men who invade the market-place of Verneuil, and there is an army of ten and another of twenty-five thousand men, who remain organized for ten days near Laon. One hundred and fifty parishes have sounded the tocsin, and the insurrection spreads for ten leagues around. Five boats loaded with grain are stopped, and, in spite of the orders of district, department, minister, King, and National Assembly, they refuse to surrender them. Their contents, in the meantime, are made the most of: "The municipal officers of the different parishes, assembled together, pay themselves their fees, to wit: one hundred sous per diem for the mayor, three livres for the municipal officers, two livres ten sous for the guards, two livres for the porters. They have ordered that these sums should be paid in grain, and they reduce grain, it is said, fifteen livres the sack. It is certain that they have divided it amongst themselves, and that fourteen hundred sacks have been distributed." In vain do the commissioners of the National Assembly make speeches to them three hours in length. The discourse being finished, they deliberate, in presence of the commissioners, whether the latter shall be hung, drowned, or cut up, and their heads put on the five points of the middle of the abbey railing. On being threatened with military force, they make their dispositions accordingly. Nine hundred men who relieve each other watch day and night on the ground, in a well chosen and permanent encampment, while lookouts stationed in the belfries of the surrounding villages have only to sound the alarm to bring together twenty-five thousand men in a few hours.—So long as the Government remains on its feet it carries on the combat as well as it can; but it grows weaker from month to month, and, after the 10th of August, when it lies on the ground, the mob takes its place and becomes the universal sovereign. From this time forth not only is the law which protects provisioning powerless against the disturbers of sale and circulation, but the Assembly actually sanctions their acts, since it decrees[3229] the stoppage of all proceedings commenced against them, remits sentences already passed, and sets free all who are imprisoned or in irons. Behold every administration, with merchants, proprietors, and farmers abandoned to the famished, the furious, and to robbers; henceforth food supplies are for those who are disposed and able to take them.

"You will be told," says a petition,[3230] "that we violate the law. We reply to these perfidious insinuations that the salvation of the people is the supreme law. We come in order to keep the markets supplied, and to insure an uniform price for wheat throughout the Republic. For, there is no doubt about it, the purest patriotism dies out (sic) when there is no bread to be had. . . . Resistance to oppression—yes, resistance to oppression is the most sacred of duties; is there any oppression more terrible than that of wanting bread? Undoubtedly, no. . . . Join us and 'Ca ira, ca ira!' We cannot end our petition better than with this patriotic air."

This supplication was written on a drum, amidst a circle of firearms; and with such accompaniments it is equivalent to a command.—They are well aware of it, and of their own authority they often confer upon themselves not only the right but also the title. In Loire-et-Cher,[3231] a band of from four to five thousand men assume the name of "Sovereign Power." They go from one market-town to another, to Saint-Calais, Montdoubleau, Blois, Vendome, reducing the cost of provisions, their troop increasing like a snowball—for they threaten "to burn the effects and set fire to the houses of all who are not as courageous as themselves."

In this state of social disintegration, insurrection is a gangrene in which the healthy are infected by the morbid parts. Mobs are everywhere produced and re-produced, incessantly, large and small, like abscesses which break out side by side, and painfully irritate each other and finally combine. There are the towns against the rural districts and rural districts against the towns. On the one hand "every farmer who transports anything to the market passes (at home) for an aristocrat,[3232] and becomes the horror of his fellow-citizens in the village." On the other hand the National Guards of the towns spread themselves through the rural districts and make raids to save themselves from death by hunger.[3233] It is admitted in the rural districts that each municipality has the right to isolate itself from the rest. It is admitted in the towns that each town has the right to derive its provisions from the country. It is admitted by the indigent of each commune that the commune must provide bread gratis or at a cheap rate. On the strength of this there is a shower of stones and a fusillade; department against department, district against district, canton against canton, all fight for food, and the strongest get it and keep it for themselves.—I have simply described the North, where, for the past three years, the crops are good. I have omitted the South, where trade is interrupted on the canal of the Deux Mers, where the procureur-syndic of Aude has lately been massacred for trying to secure the passage of a convoy; where the harvest has been poor; where, in many places, bread costs eight sous the pound; where, in almost every department, a bushel of wheat is sold twice as dear as in the North!

Strange phenomenon! and the most instructive of all, for in it we see down into the depths of humanity; for, as on a raft of shipwrecked beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of nature. The light tissue of habit and of rational ideas in which civilization has enveloped man, is torn asunder and is floating in rags around him; the bare arms of the savage show themselves, and they are striking out. The only guide he has for his conduct is that of primitive days, the startled instinct of a craving stomach. Henceforth that which rules in him and through him is animal necessity with its train of violent and narrow suggestions, sometimes sanguinary and sometimes grotesque. Incompetent or savage, in all respects like a Negro monarch, his sole political expedients are either the methods of a slaughter house or the dreams of a carnival. Two commissioners whom Roland, Minister of the Interior, sends to Lyons, are able to see within a few days the carnival and the slaughter-house.[3234]—On the one hand the peasants, all along the road, arrest everybody; the people regard every traveler as an aristocrat who is running away—which is so much the worse for those who fall into their hands. Near Autun, four priests who, to obey the law, are betaking themselves to the frontier, are put in prison "for their own protection;" they are taken out a quarter of an hour later, and, in spite of thirty-two of the mounted police, are massacred. "Their carriage was still burning as I passed, and the corpses were stretched out not far off. Their driver was still in durance, and it was it vain that I solicited his release."—On the other hand, at Lyons, the power has fallen into the hands of the degraded women of the streets. "They seized the central club, constituted themselves commissaries of police, signed notices as such, and paid visits of inspection to store-houses;" they drew up a tariff of provisions, "from bread and meat up to common peaches, and peaches of fine quality." They announced that "whoever dared to dispute it would be considered a traitor to the country, an adherent of the civil list, and prosecuted as such." All this is published, proclaimed and applied by "female commissaries of police," themselves the dregs of the lowest sinks of corruption. Respectable housewives and workwomen had nothing to do with it, nor "working-people of any class." The sole actors of this administrative parody are "scamps, a few bullies of houses of ill-fame, and a portion of the dregs of the female sex."—To this end comes the dictatorship of instinct, yonder let loose on the highway in a massacre of priests, and here, in the second city of France, in the government of strumpets.



III.—Egotism of the tax-payer.

Issoudun in 1790.—Rebellion against taxation.—Indirect taxes in 1789 and 1790.—Abolition of the salt tax, excise, and octrois.—Direct taxation in 1789 and 1790.—Delay and insufficiency of the returns.—New levies in 1791 and 1792. —Delays, partiality, and concealment in preparing the rolls.—Insufficiency of, and the delay in, the returns. —Payment in assignats.—The tax-payer relieves himself of one-half.—Devastation of the forests.—Division of the communal property.

The fear of starvation is only the sharper form of a more general passion, which is the desire of possession and the determination not to give anything up. No popular instinct, had been longer, more rudely, more universally offended under the ancient regime; and there is none which gushes out more readily under constraint, none which requires a higher or broader public barrier, or one more entirely constructed of solid blocks, to keep it in check. Hence it is that this passion from the commencement breaks down or engulfs the slight and low boundaries, the tottering embankments of crumbling earth between which the Constitution pretends to confine it.—The first flood sweeps away the pecuniary claims of the State, of the clergy, and of the noblesse. The people regard them as abolished, or, at least, they consider their debts discharged. Their idea, in relation to this, is formed and fixed; for them it is that which constitutes the Revolution. The people have no longer a creditor; they are determined to have none, they will pay nobody, and first of all, they will make no further payment to the State.

On the 14th of July, 1790, the day of the Federation, the population of Issoudun, in Touraine, solemnly convoked for the purpose, had just taken the solemn oath which was to ensure public peace, social harmony, and respect for the law for evermore.[3235] Here, probably, as elsewhere, arrangements had been made for an stirring ceremonial; there were young girls dressed in white, and learned and impressionable magistrates were to pronounce philosophical harangues. All at once they discover that the people gathered on the public square are provided with clubs, scythes, and axes, and that the National Guard will not prevent their use; on the contrary, the Guard itself is composed almost wholly of wine growers and others interested in the suppression of the duties on wine, of coopers, innkeepers, workmen, carters of casks, and others of the same stamp, all rough fellows who have their own way of interpreting the Social Contract. The whole mass of decrees, acts, and rhetorical flourishes which are dispatched to them from Paris, or which emanate from the new authorities, are not worth a halfpenny tax maintained on each bottle of wine. There are to be no more excise duties; they will only take the civic oath on this express condition, and that very evening they hang, in effigy, their two deputies, who "had not supported their interests" in the National Assembly. A few months later, of all the National Guard called upon to protect the clerks, only the commandant and two officers respond to the summons. If a docile taxpayer happens to be found, he is not allowed to pay the dues; this seems a defection and almost treachery. An entry of three puncheons of wine having been made, they are stove in with stones, a portion is drunk, and the rest taken to the barracks to debauch the soldiers; M. de Sauzay, commandant of the "Royal Roussillon," who was bold enough to save the clerks, is menaced, and for this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself. When the municipal body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that "for so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the citizens," and the regular troops sent to the Hotel-de-Ville are ordered by the people not to go except with the but-ends of their muskets in the air. Five days after this the windows of the excise office are smashed, and the public notices are torn down; the fermentation does not subside, and M. de Sauzay writes that a regiment would be necessary to restrain the town. At Saint-Amand the insurrection breaks out violently, and is only put down by violence. At Saint-Etienne-en-Forez, Bertheas, a clerk in the excise office, falsely accused of monopolizing grain,[3236] is fruitlessly defended by the National Guard; he is put in prison, according to the usual custom, to save his life, and, for greater security, the crowd insist on his being fastened by an iron collar. But, suddenly changing its mind, it breaks upon the door and drags him outside, beating him till he is unconscious. Stretched on the ground, his head still moves and he raises his hand to it, when a woman, picking up a large stone, smashes his skull.—These are not isolated occurrences. During the months of July and August, 1789, the tax offices are burnt in almost every town in the kingdom. In vain does the National Assembly order their reconstruction, insist on the maintenance of duties and octrois, and explain to the people the public needs, pathetically reminding them, moreover, that the Assembly has already given them relief;—the people prefer to relieve themselves instantly and entirely. Whatever is consumed must no longer be taxed, either for the benefit of the State or for that of the towns. "Entrance dues on wine and cattle," writes the municipality of Saint-Etienne, "scarcely amount to anything, and our powers are inadequate for their enforcement." At Cambrai, two successive outbreaks compel the excise office and the magistracy of the town[3237] to reduce the duties on beer one-half. But "the evil, at first confined to one corner of the province, soon spreads;" the grands baillis of Lille, Douai, and Orchies write that "we have hardly a bureau which has not been molested, and in which the taxes are not wholly subject to popular discretion." Those only pay who are disposed to do so, and, consequently, "greater fraud could not exist." The taxpayers, indeed, cunningly defend themselves, and find plenty of arguments or quibbles to avoid paying their dues. At Cambrai they allege that, as the privileged now pay as well as the rest, the Treasury must be rich enough.[3238] At Noyon, Ham, and Chauny, and in the surrounding parishes, the butchers, innkeepers, and publicans combined, who have refused to pay excise duties, pick flaws in the special decree by which the Assembly subjects them to the law, and a second special decree is necessary to circumvent these new legal experts. The process at Lyons is simpler. Here the thirty-two sections appoint commissioners; these decide against the octroi, and request the municipal authorities to abolish it. They must necessarily comply, for the people are at hand and are furious. Without waiting, however, for any legal measures, they take the authority on themselves, rush to the toll-houses and drive out the clerks, while large quantities of provisions, which "through a singular predestination" were waiting at the gates, come in free of duty.—The Treasury defends itself as it best can against this universally bad disposition of the tax-payer, against these irruptions and infiltrations of fraud; it repairs the dike where it has been carried away, stops up the fissures and again resumes collections. But how can these be regular and complete in a State where the courts dare not condemn delinquents, where public force dares not support the courts,[3239] where popular favor protects the most notorious bandits and the worst vagabonds against the tribunals and against the public powers? At Paris, where, After eight months of impunity, proceedings are begun against the pillagers who, on the 13th of August, 1789, set fire to the tax offices, the officers of the election, "considering that their audiences have become too tumultuous, that the thronging of the people excites uneasiness, that threats have been uttered of a kind calculated to create reasonable alarm," are constrained to suspend their sittings and refer matters to the National Assembly, while the latter, considering that "if prosecutions are authorized in Paris it will be necessary to authorize them throughout the kingdom," decides that it is best "to veil the statue of the Law."[3240]

Not only does the Assembly veil the statue of the Law, but it takes to pieces, remakes, and mutilates it, according to the requirements of the popular will; and, in the matter of indirect imposts all its decrees are forced upon it. The outbreak against the salt impost was terrible from the beginning; sixty thousand men in Anjou alone combined to destroy it, and the price of salt had to be reduced from sixteen to six sous.[3241] The people, however, are not satisfied with this. This monopoly has been the cause of so much suffering that they are not disposed to put up with any remains of it, and are always on the side of the smugglers against the excise officers. In the month of January, 1790, at Beziers, thirty-two employees, who had seized a quantity of contraband salt on the persons of armed smugglers,[3242] are pursued by the crowd to the Hotel-de-Ville; the consuls decline to defend them and run away; the troops defend them, but in vain. Five are tortured, horribly mutilated, and then hung. In the month of March, 1790, Necker states that, according to the returns of the past three months, the deficit in the salt-tax amounts to more than four millions a month, which is four-fifths of the ordinary revenue, while the tobacco monopoly is no more respected than that of salt. At Tours,[3243] the bourgeois militia refuse to give assistance to the employees, and "openly protect smuggling," "and contraband tobacco is publicly sold at the fair, under the eyes of the municipal authorities, who dare make no Opposition to it." All receipts, consequently, diminish at the same time.[3244] From the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790, the general collections amount to 127 millions instead of 150 millions; the dues and excise combined return only 31, instead of 50 millions. The streams which filled the public exchequer are more and more obstructed by popular resistance, and under the popular pressure, the Assembly ends by closing them entirely. In the month of March, 1790,[3245] it abolishes salt duties, internal customs-duties, taxes on leather, on oil, on starch, and the stamp of iron. In February and March, 1791, it abolishes octrois and entrance-dues in all the cities and boroughs of the kingdom, all the excise duties and those connected with the excise, especially all taxes which affect the manufacture, sale, or circulation of beverages. The people have in the end prevailed, and on the 1st of May, 1791, the day of the application of the decree, the National Guard of Paris parades around the walls playing patriotic airs. The cannon of the Invalides and those on the Pont-Neuf thunder out as if for an important victory. There is an illumination in the evening, there is drinking all night, a universal revel. Beer, indeed, is to be had at three sous the pot, and wine at six sous a pint, which is a reduction of one-half; no conquest could be more popular, since it brings intoxication within easy reach of the thirsty.[3246]

The object, now, is to provide for the expenses which have been defrayed by the suppressed octrois. In 1790, the octroi of Paris had produced 35,910,859 francs, of which 25,059,446 went to the State, and 10,851,413 went to the city. How is the city going to pay for its watch, the lighting and cleaning of its streets, and the support of its hospitals? What are the twelve hundred other cities and boroughs going to do which are brought by the same stroke to the same situation? What will the State do, which, in abolishing the general revenue from all entrance-dues and excise, is suddenly deprived of two-fifths of its revenue?—In the month of March, 1790, when the Assembly suppressed the salt and other duties, it established in the place of these a tax of fifty millions, to be divided between the direct imposts and dues on entrance to the towns. Now, consequently, that the entrance-dues are abolished, the new charge falls entirely upon the direct imposts. Do returns come in, and will they come in?—In the face of so many outbreaks, any indirect taxation (VAT) is, certainly, difficult to collect. Nevertheless it is not so repulsive as the other because the levies of the State disappear in the price of the article, the hand of the Exchequer being hidden by the hand of the dealer. The Government clerk formerly presented himself with his stamped paper and the seller handed him the money without much grumbling, knowing that he would soon be more than reimbursed by his customer: the indirect tax is thus collected. Should any difficulty arise, it is between the dealer and the taxpayer who comes to his shop to lay in his little store; the latter grumbles, but it is at the high price which he feels, and possibly at the seller who pockets his silver; he does not find fault with the clerk of the Exchequer, whom he does not see and who is not then present In the collection of the direct tax, on the contrary, it is the clerk himself whom he sees before him, who abstracts the precious piece of silver. This authorized robber, moreover, gives him nothing in exchange; it is an entire loss. On leaving the dealer's shop he goes away with a jug of wine, a pot of salt, or similar commodities; on leaving the tax office he has nothing in hand but an acquittance, a miserable bit of scribbled paper.—But now he is master in his own commune, an elector, a National Guard, mayor, the sole authority in the use of armed force, and charged with his own taxation. Come and ask him to unearth the buried mite on which he has set all his heart and all his soul, the earthen pot wherein he has deposited his cherished pieces of silver one by one, and which he has laid by for so many years at the cost of so much misery and fasting, in the very face of the bailiff in spite of the prosecutions of the sub-delegate, commissioner, collector, and clerk!

From the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790,[3247] the general returns, the taille and its accessories, the poll-tax and "twentieths," instead of yielding 161.000,000 francs, yield but 28,000,000 francs in the provinces which impose their own taxes (pays d'Etats); instead of 28,000,000 francs, the Treasury obtains but 6,000,000. On the patriotic contribution which was to deduct one quarter of all incomes over four hundred livres, and to levy two and a half per cent. on plate, jewels, and whatever gold and silver each person has in reserve, the State received 9.700,000 francs. As to patriotic gifts, their total, comprising the silver buckles of the deputies, reaches only 361,587 francs; and the closer our examination into the particulars of these figures, the more do we see the contributions of the villager, artisan, and former subjects of the taille diminish.—Since the month of October, 1789, the privileged classes, in fact, appear in the tax-rolls, and they certainly form the class which is best off, the most alive to general ideas and the most truly patriotic. It is therefore probable that, of the forty-three millions of returns from the direct imposts and from the patriotic contribution, they have furnished the larger portion, perhaps two thirds of it, or even three-quarters. If this be the case, the peasant, the former tax-payer, gave nothing or almost nothing from his pocket during the first year of the Revolution. For instance, in regard to the patriotic contribution, the Assembly left it to the conscience of each person to fix his own quota; at the end of six months, consciences are found too elastic, and the Assembly is obliged to confer this right on the municipalities. The result is[3248] that this or that individual who taxed himself at forty-eight livres, is taxed at a hundred and fifty; another, a cultivator, who had offered six livres, is judged to be able to pay over one hundred. Every regiment contains a small number of select brave men, and it is always these who are ready to advance under fire. Every State contains a select few of honest men who advance to meet the tax-collector. Some effective constraint is essential in the regiment to supply those with courage who have but little, and in the State to supply those with probity who do not possess it. Hence, during the eight months which follow, from May 1st, 1790, to January 1st, 1791, the patriotic contribution furnishes but 11,000,000 livres. Two years later, on the 1st of February, 1793, out of the forty thousand communal tax-rolls which should provide for it, there are seven thousand which are not yet drawn up; out of 180,000,000 livres which it ought to produce, there are 70,000,000 livres which are still due.—The resistance of the tax-payer produces a similar deficit, and similar delays in all branches of the national income.[3249] In the month of June, 1790, a deputy declares in the tribune that "out of thirty-six millions of imposts which ought to be returned each month only nine have been received."[3250] In the month of November, 1791, a reporter on the budget states that the receipts, which should amount to forty or forty-eight millions a month, do not reach eleven millions and a half. On February 1, 1793, there remains still due on the direct taxes of 1789 and 1790 one hundred and seventy-six millions. It is evident that the people struggle with all their might against the old taxes, even authorized and prolonged by the Constituent Assembly, and all that is obtained from them is wrested from them.

Will the people be more docile under the new taxation? The Assembly exhorts them to be so and shows them how, with the relief they have gained and with the patriotism they ought to possess, they can and should discharge their dues. The people are able to do it because, having got rid of tithes, feudal dues, the salt-tax, octrois and excise duties, they are in a comfortable position. They should do so, because the taxation adopted is indispensable to the State, equitable, assessed on all in proportion to their fortune, collected and expended under rigid scrutiny, without perversion or waste, according to precise, clear, periodical and audited accounts. No doubt exists that, after the 1st of January, 1791, the date when the new financial scheme comes into operation, each tax-payer will gladly pay as a good citizen, and the two hundred and forty millions of the new tax on real property, and the sixty millions of that on personal property, leaving out the rest—registries, license, and customs duties—will flow in regularly and easily of their own accord.