- Once the grain is obtained, a
price must be fixed which people can pay. Now, the difference between
the selling and cost price is enormous; it keeps on increasing as the
assignat declines and it is the government which pays this. "You
furnish bread at three sous," said Dubois-Cranc?, Flor?al 16, year
III,[136] "and it costs you four francs. Paris consumes 8,000
quintals of meal daily, which expenditure alone amounts to 1,200
millions per annum." Seven months later, when a bag of flour brings
13,000 francs, the same expenditure reaches 546 millions per month. -
Under the ancient r?gime, Paris, although overgrown, continued to be
an useful organism; if it absorbed much, it elaborated more; its
productiveness compensated for what it consumed, and, every year,
instead of exhausting the public treasury it poured 77 millions into
it. The new r?gime has converted it into a monstrous canker in the
very heart of France, a devouring parasite which, through its six
hundred thousand leeches, drains its surroundings for a distance of
forty leagues, consumes one-half the annual revenue of the State, and
yet still remains emaciated in spite of the sacrifices made by the
treasury it depletes and the exhaustion of the provinces which supply
it with food.
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