At Troyes, a poor shop-
girl who had set up a small business on borrowed money, but who is
ruined by a bankruptcy and completely so by the maximum, infirm, and
consuming piecemeal the rest of her stock, is taxed five hundred
livres.[94] In the villages of Alsace, an order is issued to arrest
the five, six or seven richest persons in the commune, even if there
are no rich; consequently, they seize the least poor, simply because
they are so; for instance, at Heiligenberg, six "farmers" one of whom
is a day-laborer, "or journey-man," "suspect," says the register of
the jail, "because he is comfortably off."[95] On this account nowhere
are there so many "suspects" as among the people; the shop, the farm
and the work-room harbor more aristocrats than the rectory and the
chateau. In effect, according to the Jacobins,[96] "nearly all
farmers are aristocrats;" "the merchants are all essentially anti-
revolutionary,"[97] and especially all dealers in articles of prime
necessity, wine-merchants, bakers and butchers; the latter especially
are open "conspirators," enemies "of the interior," and " whose
aristocracy is insupportable." Such, already, among the lower class of
people, are the many delinquents who are punished.
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