The decree allows five per cent. profit to the whole sale dealer, and ten per cent. profit to the retailer of the articles enumerated in the former law over and above the price fixed by that law. It then proceeds to enact the two following regulations :

1. "The convention, wishing to administer relief to the poorer class of the people, decrees that an indemnity shall be granted to those merchants or manufacturers, who can give satisfactory proof of their entire ruin under the operation of the law of the maximum, or who shall be reduced to a fortune of less than 4001. capital.

2. "The manufacturers and wholesale dealers who, since the law of the maximum, have quitted, or shall quit their manufactories or trade, shall be treated as suspected persons."

Thus then it is directly admitted, that the former law had already occasioned the ruin of many persons affected by it, although the interval between the passing of the two laws was little more than a month.* But the persons, to whom relief is to be given by the second law, are only those who can give satisfactory proof of their entire ruin; or whose fortunes have been reduced to a republican level. Whatever may have been the property of any merchant or manufacturer injured by the law of the maximum, no indemnity is to be granted to any sufferer whose capital has not been reduced below the sum of 400l. By what scale the revolutionary government has measured the ruin of its subjects, it is not very easy to understand. An opulent merchant or manufacturer in any other country, who by the sudden effect of a single law should find his commercial capital reduced to a sum of 4001. would be thought in a situation to give satisfactory proof of his entire ruin. But as in the law of the forced loan, the fundamental principle of the calculation was, that the income of every man in France should be reduced to one hundred and eighty pounds;

so the law of the maximum seems to have pursued the same doctrine of equality, and to have decided, that no individual should possess a commercial capital of more than four hundred pounds.

The second regulation is perhaps the most grievous act of injustice and oppression that ever was enforced against the interests of commerce. To compel subjects by an act of power to exercise any particular branch of trade, is always both unjust and impolitick; but it was reserved for the revolutionary government, first to render particular branches of trade ruinous to those who were actually engaged in them, and then to compel the same persons to pursue those ruinous branches of trade, and to imprison every man who should endeavour to save his property from that destruction, of which he already felt the approaches.

The first effect of such violence would undoubtedly be, to transfer all the articles affected by the law into the hands of the government, and to facilitate for a time the supply of Paris and of the armies. But it is evident that the reproduction of the same articles within the country would immediately receive a severe check, and that no man would purchase them from foreigners in order to sell them again at a considerable loss. The certain consequence of this measure must therefore be, to annihilate the stock of all the necessaries of life in France, and to hasten the moment when it will become impossible for the government, either to subsist the people at home, or even to maintain an army upon the frontier.*

Previous to the passing of this law, the price of corn, grain, and flower had been fixed by a special de

* In a letter published, from Lyons, are these words:

"We have neither grain, coals, wood, nor provisions of any kind. The tax called maximum was published on Saturday, which was in fact, to inform the peasants to bring nothing to market. The women rose up against them, and menaced them with the armed force. The peasants for six leagues round, keep back all eatables. They sound the tocsin when buyers approach them and treat them as monopolizers, rob and assassinate them."

cree; and I have already observed that the whole crop of every farmer under a fundamental article of the constitution of the revolutionary government was to be at the discretion of the committee of publick welfare, and of their agents in the several departments. This leads me to observe upon certain general rights with respect to the produce of the soil, and to articles of ordinary consumption claimed by the government as arising out of the revolutionary state of the republick.

The first is the right of preemption. In the report upon the law of the maximum Barrere says, "that the law of preemption renders the goverment proprietor, for the time, of every thing which commerce, industry, or agriculture have produced from the soil, or imported into the territory of France." It is impossible to hear this doctrine without remarking the intimate connexion between the principles of anarchy on which the revolutionary government was founded, and the principles of despotism by which it is maintained. From the sovereignty of the people, and the natural equality of mankind the government deduces its right to the produce of the whole soil of France, and to the whole property of every individual in the republick; a right, which is the very essence of despotism, and which has hitherto been considered as the characteristick mark by which arbitrary govern. ment was to be distinguished from limited power. Under this right, so broadly laid down, the committee of publick welfare affects to claim nothing more than a preference in the purchase of whatever articles may be required by their agents for publick use: but I have shown already, that by the law of the maximum they have exercised the power of fixing an arbitrary price upon all such articles.

The right of requisition is derived from that which I have last described. Under the right of requisition the officers of government are empowered to require from every man in the country not only whatever part of his property of any description they may choose to declare necessary for the publick use, but also his

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manual labour, and his personal service; and while this arbitrary requisition remains in force, no man can dispose of his labour to any other purchaser or employer than the officers employed by the ruling faction. You have seen that by the law of the maximum, there is a power of imprisoning every workman or daylabourer who shall attempt to evade this requisition. If any person shall make an incorrect declaration of property which has been put into a state of requisition, the government derives from that circumstance a further right, which is called the right of PREHENSION: * under this they immediately seize his goods, and sell them by auction to the profit of the publick treasury. The vexations practised against farmers, who have not given in satisfactory accounts of their crop, or who have ventured to sell any part of it in compliance with the urgent demands of their neighbours, are innumerable; and the same violence has been used against every person engaged in trade of any kind.

Out of these extraordinary rights arises as extraordinary a crime, which is called the crime of monopoly, and which is usually imputed to the class of merchants and wealthy farmers, or in general to those who are termed egotists, according to the definition which I have already given of that word.

A monopolist is the possessor of any quantity of the necessaries of life, beyond the exigency of his daily subsistence. Every man therefore, whose circumstances are at all above indigence, is liable to the charge of monopoly. Whoever happens to have laid up any quantity of the articles which the government think fit to require for their service, is also deemed a monopolist. Thus every farmer whose barns and granaries are not empty, every merchant and tradesman whose warehouse or shop is not entirely unprovided with goods must be subject to the charge of monopoly.* This crime is punished differently according to the enormity of the case. In some instances the punishment is imprisonment attended with forfeiture of property; but it is much more frequently

death.

With such theoretical maxims, and with such a practical system, the convention might reasonably have expected to find both agriculture and commerce in that state of " counter-revolutionary peevishness," which should suspend every manufacture, every useful art of industry, and every honest pursuit of skill or labour. They need not have sought in the influence of the mercantile government of England (as they term it) an effect, which is the natural and inevitable result of their own violence and oppression. But conclusions of more importance to our present deliberation may be drawn from this detail. I have shown already, that by the forced loan, they have effectually checked the progressive increase of commercial capital. By the law of the maximum with its supplement they have gone a step further, and have directly seized the whole commercial stock of the country for the service of the current year. I have shown already that according to their own statements and to the very nature of things their extraordinary expedients of finance cannot be renewed with