Henceforth, the Jacobin edifice crumbles, owing to great crevices in
its walls. The "maximum," in fact, is no longer maintained, while the
Convention, at the end of December, 1794, legally abolishes it. The
farmers now sell as they please and at two prices, according as they
are paid in assignats or coin; their hope, confidence and courage are
restored; in October and November, 1794, they voluntarily do their own
plowing and planting, and still more gladly will they gather in their
own crops in July, 1795. Nevertheless, we can judge by the
discouragement into which they had been plunged by four months of the
system, the utter prostration into which they would have fallen had
the system lasted an indefinite time. It is very probable that
cultivation at the end of one or two years would have proved
unproductive or have ceased altogether. Already, subject to every
sort of exhortation and threat, the peasant had remained inert,
apparently deaf and insensible, like an overloaded beast of burden
which, so often struck, grows obstinate or sinks down and refuses to
move. It is evident that he would have never stirred again could
Saint-Just, holding him by the throat, have bound him hand and foot,
as he had done at Strasbourg, in the multiplied knots of his Spartan
Utopia.
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