Whatever his motives may have been, his conduct was consistent. All his words and actions were in favor of liberty sustained by strong law. He wished for the overthrow of aristocratic insolence and feudal oppression, from which he had so severely suffered. He wished to preserve the monarchical form of government, and to establish a constitution which should secure to all the citizens equality of rights.[218]
Feudality was now destroyed, and a free constitution adopted. Still, business was stagnant, the poor destitute of employment and in a state of starvation. As an act of charity, seventeen thousand men were employed by the municipality of Paris digging on the heights of Montmartre at twenty sous a day. The suffering was so great that the office of the municipality was crowded with tradesmen and merchants imploring employment on these terms. "I used to see," writes the mayor, Bailly, "good tradespeople, mercers and goldsmiths, who prayed to be admitted among the beggars employed at Montmartre in digging the ground. Judge what I suffered."
The city government sunk two thousand dollars a day in selling bread to the poor at less than cost; and yet there were emissaries of the court buying up this bread and destroying it to increase the public distress.[219] On the 19th day of August the city of Paris contained food sufficient but for a single day. Bailly and La Fayette were in an agony of solicitude. So great was the dismay in Paris, that all the rich were leaving. Sixty thousand passports were signed at the Hôtel de Ville in three months.[220]
Armed bands were exploring the country to purchase food wherever it could be found, and convey it to the city. Six hundred of the National Guard were stationed by day and by night to protect the corn-market from attack. It is surprising that when the populace were in such distress so few acts of violence should have been committed.[221]
The kind heart of the king was affected by this misery. He sent nearly all his plate to be melted and coined at the mint for the relief of the poor. This noble example inspired others. General enthusiasm was aroused, and the hall of the National Assembly was crowded with the charitable bringing voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor. Rich men sent in their plate, patriotic ladies presented their caskets of jewelry, and the wives of tradesmen, artists, and mechanics brought the marriage gifts which they had received and the ornaments which embellished their dwellings. Farmers sent in bags of corn, and even poor women and children offered their mites. A school-boy came with a few pieces of gold which his parents had sent to him for spending-money. This overflowing of charity presented a touching display of the characteristic magnanimity and impulsiveness of the French people.[222]
PATRIOTIC CONTRIBUTIONS.
But private charity, however profuse, is quite inadequate to the wants of a nation. These sums were soon expended, and still the unemployed poor crawled fasting and emaciated about the streets. Necker's plans for loans were frustrated. No one would lend. To whom should he lend? The old régime was dying; the new not yet born. In this terrible emergency Necker proposed the desperate measure of imposing a tax of one quarter of every man's income, declaring that there was no other refuge from bankruptcy. The interest upon the public debt could no longer be paid, the wages of the soldiers were in arrears, and the treasury utterly empty. The proposal frightened the Assembly, but Mirabeau ascended the tribune, and in one of his most impassioned appeals carried the measure by acclamation.[223] The distracted state of the kingdom, however, prevented the act thus enthusiastically adopted from being carried into effect.[224]