Consequently, at Paris,[87] the Committee of Public Safety first puts "in requisition all the oats that can be found in the Republic; every holder of oats is required to deposit his stock on hand within eight days, in the storehouse indicated by the district administration " at the maximum " price; otherwise he is " a 'suspect' and must be punished as such." In the meantime, through still more comprehensive orders issued in the provinces, Paganel in the department of Tarn, and Dartigoyte in those of Gers and the Upper-Garonne,[88] enjoin each commune to establish public granaries. "All citizens are ordered to bring in whatever produce they possess in grain, flour, wheat, maslin, rye, barley, oats, millet, buckwheat" at the "maximum" rate. Nobody shall keep on hand more than one month's supply, fifty pounds of flour or wheat for each person; in this way, the State, which holds in its hands the keys of the storehouses, may "carry out the salutary equalization of provisions" between department and department, district and district, commune and commune, individual and individual.
A storekeeper will look after each of these well filled granaries; the municipality will itself deliver rations and, moreover, "take suitable steps to see that beans and vegetables, as they mature, be economically distributed under its supervision," at so much per head, and always at the rate of the "maximum." Otherwise, dismissal, imprisonment and prosecution "in the extraordinary criminal tribunal.
"-This being accomplished, and the fruits of labor duly allotted, there remains only the allotment of labor itself. To effect this, Maignet,[89] in Vaucluse, and in the Bouches du Rh?ne, prescribes for each municipality the immediate formation of two lists, one of day laborers and the other of proprietors. "All proprietors in need of a cultivator by the day," are to appear and ask for one at the municipality, which will assign the applicant as many as he wants, "in order on the list," with a card for himself and numbers for the designated parties. The laborer who does not enter his name on the list, or who exacts more than the "maximum " wages, is to be sentenced to the pillory with two years in irons. The same sentence with the addition of a fine of three hundred livres, is for every proprietor who employs any laborer not on the list or who pays more than the "maximum rate of wages.
After this, nothing more is necessary, in practice, than to* draw up and keep in sight the new registries of names and figures made by the members of thirty thousand municipal boards, who cannot keep accounts and who scarcely know how to read and write;* build a vast public granary, or put in requisition three or four barns in each commune, in which half dried and mixed grain may rot;* pay two hundred thousand incorruptible storekeepers and measurers who will not divert anything from the depots for their friends or themselves;* add to the thirty five thousand employees of the Committee on Provisions,[90] five hundred thousand municipal scribes disposed to quit their trades or ploughs for the purpose of making daily distributions gratuitously; but more precisely, to maintain four or five millions of perfect gendarmes, one in each family, living with it, to help along the purchases, sales and transactions of each day and to verify at night the contents of the locker.
In short, to set one half of the French people as spies on the other half. - These are the conditions which secure the production and distribution of food, and which suffice for the institution throughout France of a conscription of labor and the captivity of grain.
Unfortunately, the peasant does not understand this theory, but he understands business; he makes close calculations, and the positive, patent, vulgar facts on which he reasons lead to other conclusions:[91]
"In Messidor last they took all my last years' oats, at fourteen francs in assignats, and, in Thermidor, they are going to take all this year's oats, at eleven francs in assignats. At this rate I shall not sow at all. Besides, I do not need any for myself, as they have taken my horses for the army wagons. To raise rye and wheat, as much of it as formerly, is also working at a loss; I will raise no more than the little I want for myself, and again, I suppose that this will be put in requisition, even my supplies for the year! I had rather let my fields lie fallow. Just see now, they are taking all the live three months' pigs! Luckily, I killed mine be forehand and it is now in the pork barrel. But they are going to claim all salt provisions like the rest. The new grabbers are worse than the old ones. Six months more, and we shall all die of hunger. It is better to cross one's arms at once and go to prison; there, at least, we shall be fed and not have to work."In effect, they allow themselves to be imprisoned, the best of the small cultivators and proprietors by thousands, and Lindet,[92] at the head of the Commission on Provisions, speaks with dismay of the ground being no longer tilled, of cattle in France being no more abundant than the year before, and of nothing to be had to cut this year.
For a strange thing has happened, unheard of in Europe, almost incredible to any one familiar with the French peasant and his love of work. This field which he has ploughed, manured, harrowed and reaped with his own hands, its precious crop, the crop that belongs to him and on which he has feasted his eyes for seven months, now that it is ripe, he will not take the trouble to gather it; it would be bothering himself for some one else. As the crop that he sees there is for the government, let the government defray the final cost of getting it in;let it do the harvesting, the reaping, the putting it in sheaves, the carting and the thrashing in the barn. - Thereupon, the representatives on mission exclaim, each shouting in a louder or lower key, according to his character.