"[111] Two years after, four years after, the accounts of
revolutionary taxation of forced loans, and of pretended voluntary
gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of accounts
rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be
verified; the rest are irregular and worthless. Besides, in many
cases, not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcoming, but,
again, it is proved that the sums collected disappeared wholly or in
part. At Villefranche, out of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand
francs collected, the collector of the district deposited but forty-
two thousand; at Baugency, out of more than five hundred thousand
francs collected, there were only fifty thousand deposited; at la
R?ole, out of at least five hundred thousand francs collected, there
were but twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty deposited. "The
rest," says the collector at Villefranche, "were wasted by the
Committee of Surveillance." "The tax-collectors," writes the national-
agent at Orleans, "after having employed terror gave themselves up to
orgies and are now building palaces."[112] - As to the expenses which
they claim, they almost always consist of "indemnities to members of
revolutionary committees, to patriots, and to defray the cost of
patriotic missions," to maintaining and repairing the meeting-rooms of
the popular clubs, to military expeditions, and to succoring the poor,
so that three or four hundred millions in gold or silver, extorted
before the end of 1793, hundreds of millions of assignats extorted in
1793 and 1794, in short, almost the entire product of the total
extraordinary taxation[113] was consumed on the spot and by the sans-
culottes.
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