- Fortunate circumstances which save France from
extreme famine.
This penury only exists, say the Jacobins, because the laws against
monopoly, and sales above the "maximum" prices are not being obeyed to
the letter of the law. The egoism of the cultivator and the cupidity
of dealers are not restrained by fear and delinquents escape too
frequently from the legal penalty. Let us enforce this penalty
rigorously; let us increase the punishment against them and their
instruments; let us screw up the machine and give them a new wrench.
A new estimate and verification of the food supply takes place,
domiciliary searches, seizures of special stores regarded as too
ample,[83] limited rations for each consumer, a common and obligatory
mess table for all prisoners, brown, ?galit? bread, mostly of bran,
for every mouth that can chew, prohibition of the making of any other
kind, confiscation of boulters and sieves,[84] the "individual,"
personal responsibility of every administrator who allows the people
he directs to resist or escape providing the demanded supplies, the
sequestration of his property, imprisonment, fines, the pillory and
the guillotine to hurry up requisitions, or stop free trading, - every
terrifying method is driven to the utmost against the farmers and
cultivators of the soil.
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