Prev | Current Page 808 | Next

Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

Sugar,
from twenty sous, advances to four francs ten sous; a candle costs
seven sous. France, pushed on by the Jacobins, approaches the depths
of misery, entering the first circle of its Inferno; other circles
follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still and yet more somber;
under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the lowest?

III. Privation.
First and general cause of privations. - The socialist principle of
the Revolutionary government. - Measures against large as well as
small properties. - Expropriation of all remaining corporations,
enormous issues of paper-money. forced rates of its circulation,
forced loans, requisitions of coin and plate, revolutionary taxes,
suppression of special organs of labor on a large scale. - New
measures against small proprietorship. - The Maximum, requisitions
for food and labor. - Situation of the shop-keeper, cultivator and
laborer. - Effect of the measures on labor on a small scale.
Stoppage of sales.
Obviously, if the people is not being fed properly and in places not
at all, it is because one of the central and most important fibers of
the economical machine has been incapacitated. It is evident that
this fiber controls the sentiment by which man holds on to his
property, fears to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to
increase it.


Pages:
796 797 798 799 800 801 802 803 804 805 806 807 808 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820