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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

- Subject to the clamors and menaces of
the street they dispatch things rapidly; they cease to care for the
future, the present being all that concerns them; they take and take
forcibly; they uphold violence by brutality, they support robbery with
murder; they expropriate persons by categories and appropriate objects
by categories, and after the rich they despoil the poor. - During
fourteen months the revolutionary government thus keeps both hands at
work, one hand completing the confiscation of property, large and
medium, and the other proceeding to the entire abolition of property
even on a small scale.
Against large or medium properties it suffices to extend and aggravate
the decrees already passed. - The spoliation of the last of existing
corporations must be effected: the government, confiscates the
property of hospitals, communes, and all scientific or literary
associations.[31]
To this we must add the spoliation of State credits and all other
credits: it issues in fourteen months 5 100 millions of assignats, at
one time and with one decree 1,400 million and another time 2,000
millions. It thus condemns itself to complete future bankruptcy.


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