reservoirs by which their industry is maintained. During the perils and chances of a revolution, the tendency to gambling of every sort prodigiously increased. Men who had the sword of Damocles continually suspended over their heads, sought to make the most of the numerous chances of making grain-merchants to declare what stock | tendency to turn from the people the they had in their possession, and to bring it to the public markets at a price fixed by each commune. Domiciliary visits were authorised, to inspect the stock of each holder of corn, and false returns were punished by a forfeiture of the whole. In addition to this, the distribution of bread by the bakers was provided for in the most minute man-money which the rapid issue and fall ner. No one could obtain it without producing a carte de sûreté, issued by the revolutionary committees; and on that carte was inscribed the number of his family, and the quantity to be delivered to each member. Finally, to put an end to the scandalous scenes which generally took place at the bakers' doors, it was enacted that every bread shop should have a rope attached to it; each person, as he arrived, was obliged to take it in his hand, and remain quietly there till all before him were served. But in the struggles of discontent and famine, the cord was frequently broken, fierce conflicts ensued, and nothing but a prompt interposition of military force was able to restore tranquillity. To such minute and vexatious regulations are governments reduced when they once violate the freedom of human action; and to such a load of fetters do the people in the end subject themselves, when they give way to the insane passion for democratic power. of the assignats, and the boundless profusion of articles of luxury, brought into the market by the ruin of their owners, naturally occasioned. So enormous did these evils become that on 26th July 1793 the forestalling of provisions was declared a capital crime; and the penalty of death was in like manner extended to all those who retained articles of subsistence without bringing them to daily sale, or who did not, within eight days from the publication of the decree, make a declaration to the municipal officers of their district, of the amount of provisions, including wine and oil, they had on hand, with a specification of the proportions in which they were going to bring them to market. 59. The bourse of Paris was crowded with bankers, revolutionists, ci-devant priests, ruined nobles, and adventurers of every description, who sometimes made enormous gains, and passed a life of debauchery with actresses, operadancers, and abandoned women of every description, whom the dissolution of society had brought in contact with those who had risen for the moment on the 58. All the other articles of subsistence as well as corn speedily rose with the increased issue of the assignats, and the people persisted in ascribing to fore-wheels of fortune. Such was the unistallers the natural consequences of a depreciated circulation. Frightful tumults in consequence arose; the boats which descended the Seine with groceries, fruits, and wood, were seized and plundered. Terrified at the continual recurrence of these disorders, the capitalists declined investing their money in purchases of any sort; and the shares in foreign mercantile companies rose rapidly from the increased demand for them, as the only investment affording a tolerable degree of security another striking proof of the disastrous influence of the disorders consequent on popular ambition, and their versal profligacy of manners, arising from the dread of popular jealousy, that almost all the members of the Convention lived publicly with mistresses, who became possessed of much of their influence in the state. To have done otherwise would have exposed them to the blasting suspicion of being Christians and Royalists. This prevailing profligacy appeared in the most striking manner in the great number of divorces which took place during this calamitous period of French history. They were owing partly to marriage being now declared a civil contract, which might be dissolved at any time at the pleasure of the contracting parties; partly to the irreligion and lax morality of the age; and partly to the dreadful uncertainty of life, and the thirst for immediate enjoyment, which had seized all classes from that uncertainty. From these combined causes, the morality of the age, as measured by the relations of the sexes, sank lower in revolutionary France than it had ever done in modern Europe; and the number of divorces,* in the first burst of social regeneration, exceeded what had been known in Rome under the despotism of the Cæsars. So far did the universal fervour and the license of passion proceed, that it led to the institution of clubs for women, where political subjects of all sorts were discussed with all the vehemence and impassioned feeling which characterise the softer sex. One of these female clubs was held in a hall adjoining that of the Jacobins, and speedily became the favourite resort of the most noted actresses and courtesans in Paris. One of the former, named Rose Lacombe, acquired great celebrity by her fearless demeanour, her beauty, and ardent declamations in favour of republican principles. The disorders consequent on these female assemblies, which had six thousand members, at length became so flagrant, that they attracted the notice of the Convention and municipality. Chaumette had the address to persuade the female patriots who had forced their way into the hall of the municipality, that they had mistaken the real theatre of their power, and that, instead of aiming at dividing the government of the state with men, they would do better to acquire an undivided dominion by ruling the men. The female clubs were soon after closed by order of the Convention. 60. Nor was the state of the prisons in Paris and over France a less extraordinary and memorable monument of the Reign of Terror. When the Girondists were overthrown, on the 31st May 1793, the number of prisoners in the different jails of Paris was about 1150; but, before three months of the Reign of Terror had elapsed, their number was doubled, and it gradually rose to an average of six, seven, and at last eight thousand, constantly in captivity in the metropolis alone. The whole prisons in the capital being filled by this prodigious crowd, the castle of Vincennes was surveyed with a view to additional accommodation, and the Jacobins boasted it could contain six or seven thousand more. The official bulletins, published weekly, of the number of prisoners in the jails of Paris, is one of the most interesting monuments of the Revolution, and Leveaux's Journal de la Montagne, the Jacobin organ of Paris, set up on the 2d June 1793, has at least done one service to humanity by having preserved the dismal record. It is equalled only by the catalogue of the executions, which, long averaging from seven to ten, at length rose to forty and fifty, and, on the fall of Robespierre, had * The following Table-one of the most curious records of the Revolution-compiled from the Moniteur of the dates under mentioned, shows the marriages and divorces in Paris during part of the Reign of Terror : The marriages and divorces-or "état civil," as it is called-are published very irregularly in the Moniteur. t "Nature,' said Chaumette, has said to man, Be a man; to woman, Be a woman, and you will become the divinity of life. Imprudent women, who wish to act the part of men! are you not already well enough off? You sway all our senses. Your despotism is that of love, and consequently of nature.' At these words the women pulled off the red cap.' LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins, vii. 355. " "Repair to Vincennes. Six or seven thousand prisoners might be quartered there."— Note de PAYAN; Papiers trouvés chez ROBESPIERRE, ii. 403. at times reached eighty a-day. Apply latter stages had risen to three hundred these numbers to the remainder of thousand, of whom, for a month before France, which, considering the enor the fall of Robespierre, from two to three mous accumulation of prisoners at thousand were daily put to death by the Lyons, Toulon, and La Vendée, and the guillotine;-at least a hundred times the revolutionary tribunals at work in al- number of prisoners, and a thousand most every considerable town, espe- times the number of executions, that, cially Nantes, Toulon, Bordeaux, Lyons, since the atrocious era of the revocation Strassburg, and Arras, seems not be- of the Edict of Nantes, had disgraced yond the bounds of probability, and the worst period of the monarchy.* call the population of Paris 650,000, or about a fortieth part of the whole population of France, which at that period contained about 26,000,000 souls, and we shall arrive at the result, that at the commencement of the Reign of Terror, the number of persons in jail, almost all for political offences, was over all France forty-five thousand, and in its 61. The forced requisitions of horses, ammunition, provisions, and stores of every sort from the people, soon proved the source of infinite and most vexatious burdens. In August 1793, eighteen commissioners were nominated by the Convention, with powers to require from the primary assemblies, in every part of France, unlimited supplies of + Including those in the Conciergerie. sent, were not included in the returns, and Qui n'a que ses fureurs pour maximes d'état, Immense as these numbers are, we have the authority of an unexceptionable witness for the fact, that, during the last five months of the period, they were in reality at least 1000 greater every week than these returns exhibit.-Déposition de LECOINTRE; Procès de FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, No. XV.-One reason of this was, that from the date of the decree in June 1794, directing state prisoners from the departments in many cases to be forwarded to Paris, the prisoners in the Conciergerie, one of the largest jails in that city, to which these foreign detachments were-Sertorius. Act iii. scene 2. railles Que ces proscriptions comblent de funérailles; men, horses, provisions, and ammuni- | them on the same footing with the tion. The principle founded on was, armies, and give the agents of governthat the men and animals indispensable ment the right of making forced requifor the purposes of agriculture should sitions for their support. alone be preserved, and that all the remainder might be seized for the purposes of the Republic. All the horses of draught and burden, not absolutely required by the cultivators or manuacturers, were seized for the state; all the arms of every description appropriated by the government commissioners; the great hotels of the emigrants confiscated to the use of the state, and converted into vast workshops for the manufacture of arms, clothing, or equipment for the armies, or magazines for the storing of subsistence for the use of the people. The principal manufactory of arms was established at Paris, and the whole workmen in iron and jewellery were pressed into its service. It soon became capable of sending forth a thousand muskets a-day. To such a length did the dictators carry their principle of managing everything of their own authority, that they compelled a return of the whole subsistence in every part of the country, and endeavoured to purchase it all, and distribute it either to the armies, or at a low price to the imperious citizens of the towns. This system of forced requisitions gave the government the command of a large proportion of the agricultural produce of the kingdom, and it was enforced with merciless severity. Not only grain, but horses, carriages, and conveyances of every sort, were forcibly taken from the cultivators; and as the payment they received was wholly in assignats, it in truth amounted to nothing. These exactions excited the most violent discontent, but no one ventured to give it vent: to have expressed dissatisfaction, would immediately have led to denunciation at the nearest revolutionary committee, and put the complainer in imminent hazard of his life. To complete the burden, the democratic power, incessant clamour, and destitute situation of the people in the great towns, rendered it indispensable to adopt some general measures for their relief; and the only method which was found effectual was to put 62. The maintenance of such immense bodies of men as the idle revolutionists in the great cities composed, ere long came to be of itself equal to the whole administration of an ordinary government. A board was appointed of five directors, who soon had ten thousand persons in daily pay, incessantly occupied in enforcing these requisitions for their support. This corps of commissaries for Paris was of itself an army. No less than 636,000 persons daily received rations at the public offices, the entire amount being eighteen hundred and ninety-seven sacks of meal; and the attention of government was incessantly directed towards keeping the citizens in good humour_by_regularity in the distribution. The losses sustained by the agriculturists in providing for this daily consumption were enormous; the cost of producing their grain had augmented tenfold from the depreciation of paper, and yet they were only paid the former price by the requisitionists. The farmers were obliged to pay ten francs a-day to their labourers, instead of one franc, as in 1790, and everything else in the same proportion; yet they were compelled to part with their grain at the price fixed by the maximum, which was calculated on the scale of prices before the Revolution, to the imperious and needy multitudes in the towns. In other words, ninetenths of the subsistence daily consumed in Paris was extorted without payment from the cultivators in the country, and the cries of the sufferers were stifled by the prospect of the guillotine-a striking instance of the grinding oppression exercised even over their own class by the sovereign people, when they once obtain the ascendancy, and the state of subjection to which, in the progress of revolutions, the inhabitants of the country invariably fall to the citizens of towns. 63. The necessity of feeding the multitude entailed other expenses of a more serious kind on the Convention, and occasioned a large part of their never ending financial embarrassments. Government bought grain from foreigners for twenty-one francs the quintal, and retailed it to the populace for fourteen; the cessation of agricultural labour in a great part of the country rendered it indispensable to carry on this ruinous commerce to a great extent, and the losses thence accruing to the state were stated by Cambon as enormous. The expense of feeding the inhabitants of Paris soon nearly equalled that of the maintenance of the fourteen armies. The Convention introduced the ruinous system of distributing every day, to every citizen of the capital, as the only means of keeping them quiet, a pound of bread, at the price of three sous in assignats a burden which, from the fall in the value of paper, soon became almost as great as that of supporting them altogether. As provisions, in consequence of these prodigious efforts made in favour of the metropolis, were far cheaper there than in the surrounding districts, smuggling from the one to the other went on to a vast extent, and continual complaints were made of the great fortunes which the rich were making by exporting quantities of bread out of the metropolis. At the commencement of the Reign of Terror, the government adopted the plan of a forced loan from the opulent classes. This tax was imposed on an ascending scale, increasing according to the fortunes of the individuals; and out of an income of 50,000 francs, or £2000 a-year, they took, in 1792, 36,000 francs, or £1440. This immense burden was calculated as likely to produce at once a milliard of francs, or £40,000,000 sterling; and, as a security for this advance, the persons taxed received assignats, or were inscribed as public creditors on the grand livre of the French funds-a security, in either case, depending entirely on the success of the Revolution, and which proved in the end almost elusory. 64. The public creditors of every description continued to be paid in assignats at par, notwithstanding their having fallen to a tenth of their nominal value; in other words, they received only a tenth part of what was really due to them. To perpetuate still further the dependence of the monied classes on the fortunes of the Revolution, the plan was projected by Cambon, and adopted by the Convention, of compelling all holders of stock to surrender to government their titles to it, and, in lieu of every other written right, they were merely inscribed on the grand livre of the French debt; and an extract of that inscription constituted thereafter the sole title of the proprietor. Most severe laws were enacted to compel the surrender of the older titles to the stock, which were immediately burned; and if a year elapsed without this being done, the capital was forfeited. All the capital sums owing by the state were converted into perpetual annuities, at the rate of five per cent; so that a stock of 1000 francs was inscribed on the book for a perpetual annuity of fifty francs, and government was for ever relieved of the burden of discharging the principal sums. "In this manner," said Cambon, “the debt contracted by despotism becomes undistinguishable from that contracted since the Revolution; and I defy despotic power, should it ever revive, to distinguish its ancient creditors from those of the new régime. As soon as this operation is completed, you will see the capitalist who now desires the restoration of a king, because he has a king for a debtor, and who fears that he will lose his fortune if he is not reestablished, desire equally vehemently the preservation of the Republic, when his private interests are irrecoverably wound up in its preservation." whole creditors, both royal and republican, were paid only in assignats, which progressively fell to a fifth, a tenth, a hundredth, and at last, in 1797, to a two hundred and fiftieth part of their nominal value; so that in the space of a few years the payment was entirely elusory, and a national bankruptcy had in fact existed many years before it was formally declared by the Directory. The 65. All the measures of government, however, how vigorous and despotic soever, proved inadequate to sustain the falling value of the assignats, or keep down the money price of provisions, or |