In this way, they speculate on another's wants; they augment
the general distress and become public enemies. Nearly all the
agriculturists, manufacturers and tradesmen of the day, little and
big, are public enemies - farmers, tenant farmers, market-gardeners,
cultivators of every degree, as well as foremen, shopkeepers,
especially wine-dealers, bakers and butchers.
"All merchants are essentially anti-revolutionaries, and would sell
their country to gain a few pennies."[78]
We will not tolerate this legal brigandage. Since "agriculture has
done nothing for liberty and has sought only its own gain,"[79] we
will put it under surveillance, and, if necessary, under control.
Since "commerce has become a species of miserly tyrant," since "it has
become self-paralyzed," and, "through a sort of anti-revolutionary
contempt, neglected the manufacture, handling and expedition of
diverse materials," we will thwart "the calculations of its barbarous
arithmetic, and purge it of the aristocratic and corrupting
fermentation which oppresses it." We make monopoly "a capital
crime;"[80] we call him a monopolist who "takes food and wares of
prime necessity out of circulation," and "keeps them stored without
daily and publicly offering them for sale.
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