The French Revolution

by Sir Charles Edward Mallet

More interesting, however, than the iniquities of the proconsuls of the Terror, are the principles which those iniquities were intended to enforce. There were always differences of view among the Jacobins, and no very consistent rules governed their legislation. But still it is possible to point to certain maxims as influencing their conduct, maxims which, set in a different light and approached in a different spirit, have in other ages roused enthusiasm and won respect. These maxims found their strongest supporters in the politicians of the Commune. Their adoption was largely due to the municipality of Paris; and the ascendency of that party, which reached its height in November, 1793, marks the climax of the Revolution and, as regards political doctrine, the furthest point of the democratic advance.

The chief point for which the Terrorists contended was the absolute supremacy of the State and the entire subordination to it of individual rights. The supremacy of the State, in the Jacobin theory, extended over life and property alike. It was the duty of every member of the State to work for it. It was the right of every member of the State to be supported by it. In pursuance of these ideas the Republic asserted its title not only to the estates of the Crown, of the Church, of the Emigrants and the suspected, but to corporate property of every kind, to the estates of hospitals, of scientific bodies, of educational and benevolent institutions. It resumed all lands alienated by the Crown during the past three hundred years. It claimed the right of appropriating for public purposes, under the name of requisition and at such prices as it chose to fix, all the products of commerce, agriculture and manufacture. 'Whatever is essential to preserve life,' said Robespierre, 'is common property to Society at large.' 'When the public needs require it,' argued another deputy, 'all belongs to the people and nothing to individuals.' Thus every man between eighteen and twenty-five was required to serve in the armies of the Republic. Thus, in order to clothe and shoe the army, tailors and shoemakers were summoned to headquarters and required to work for the servants of the State. In some districts all blue and green cloaks were confiscated to the service of the Republic. Thus, too, all millers, farmers and labourers, all who prepared food for the people, were required to labour at the command of the State. On one occasion the Government ordered that all the oats in the territories of the Republic should be deposited within a week at certain specified places and surrendered to the local authorities at the price fixed by the State. On other occasions the authorities ordered all specie and gold and silver articles to be surrendered for public purposes under penalty of death.

But these far-reaching claims involved very arbitrary measures. In order to secure obedience to its commands, the State must be able to rely upon its servants, and accordingly it imposed offices and duties, wherever it found convenient nominees. All whom it appointed were forced to accept, and no disclaimer was permitted. Further, the State undertook to supervise everyone who worked for the community, all manufacturers, cultivators and dealers. It discussed the feasibility of converting its retail-traders into salaried servants. All those whom it required to work had to work, whether they liked or not, or else be denounced as 'Muscadins' and heavily punished and fined. The State undertook to provide them with work and to settle the rate of their wages. In certain districts the authorities were required to draw up lists of labourers out of employment and of farms in need of labour. The men were then supplied to the farmers, and their wages fixed by the State. If any labourer did not have his name put down, or asked for more than the wages fixed, he was sentenced to imprisonment in irons. Every man had to give his services when the State demanded it, or be punished as egoistic and refractory. If he were ruined by compliance it was his fault, for the State could do no wrong. The State compelled for good, and all men must obey.

In return for this implicit obedience to its calls, the State undertook to watch over the welfare of its subjects. 'Society,' cried Robespierre, 'must provide for the support of all its members.' A few enthusiasts, like St. Just and Babœuf, suggested the abolition of private property; but that view was not very widely accepted, and the general tendency of Jacobin legislation was to distribute property and not to forbid it. 'In a well-ordered republic,' said Barère, 'nobody should be without some property.' Accordingly, two broad rules were adopted, first, that no man must have too much, and secondly, that every man must have enough. In order to secure the first of these principles drastic measures were needed. The rich were taxed and proscribed. Fines of enormous amount were levied on them, recklessly imposed by any authority which had the power to enforce payment. At the same time confiscations multiplied, and lands, houses, plate and art treasures were swept into the coffers of the Republic. A distinction was drawn between what was essential and what was surplus. The essential was fixed at forty pounds a year a head. Beyond that it was proposed that the wealthiest families should keep only an income of a hundred and eighty pounds. 'Opulence,' declared St. Just, 'is infamous.' 'The richest of Frenchmen,' cried Robespierre, 'ought not to have more than a hundred and twenty pounds a year.' To guard against inequalities of wealth in the future, freedom of bequest was abolished, and the rights of testators were strictly limited so that their property might be divided on their death. If a man had no children, the State encouraged him to adopt some, in order that his estate might be distributed amongst them. 'Equal rights,' said a deputy, 'could only be maintained by a persistent tendency to uniformity of fortunes.'

'But,' said Barère, 'it is not enough to bleed the rich and to pull down colossal fortunes. The slavery of poverty must be made to disappear from the soil of the Republic.' Accordingly, for those who had no means of subsistence the State provided in a variety of ways. It allotted to them confiscated lands. It enrolled them in the Revolutionary Army. It provided for them in the public service, or paid them to attend committees, meetings and clubs. Communes were required to draw up lists of all citizens who had no property of their own, in order that the State might come to their relief. A 'big ledger of national beneficence' was instituted in each department for the old, the widowed and the infirm, so that they might receive pensions from the State. 'Every citizen,' wrote St. Just, one of the law-givers of the Terrorist Utopia, 'must have his own bread, his own roof, and all that is indispensable for life. He must live independently, respect himself, have a tidy wife and healthy and robust children.' But should he decline to conform to this ideal, the penalty was death.

But it was not enough to furnish incomes for all; it was necessary to take further measures to provide that the prices of necessaries should be such that every man could buy them. Accordingly, by the Maximum laws the State proceeded to fix a limit for the price of bread; and from that it rapidly passed on to limit the prices of other necessaries, of meat and vegetables, of soap and firewood, of butter, tobacco, sugar, beer, even of manufactured articles and of raw material as well. On the same grounds, in order to make things plentiful and cheap, the State watched jealously over all dealers and producers. Monopoly was made a capital crime. Manufacturers, agriculturists and tradesmen were freely denounced as public enemies. Capitalists and usurers were held up to public execration. The Bourse was closed. Financial associations were suppressed. Bankers, stock-brokers, and silver dealers were forbidden to exercise their calling. Heavy restrictions limited the import and export trade of the country, and the investment of capital abroad. Hébert declared that all tradesmen were 'essentially anti-revolutionists, and would sell their country for a few halfpence.' Other Jacobins maintained that 'nearly all farmers were aristocrats,' and proscribed the butchers in particular as 'an intolerable aristocracy.' The more these arbitrary measures failed, the more implacably did their authors enforce them. Farmers were forbidden to sell their produce privately. Shopkeepers were compelled to offer to the public all that they had in their shops. Penalty of death was denounced against the manufacturer who did not make full use of his materials, penalty of death against the dealer who did not post up a list of all that he had in stock, penalty of death against the cultivator who did not bring his grain to market, penalty of death against any person who kept more bread on hand than he required for his own subsistence. Similar heavy penalties followed for all who infringed the Maximum laws, and who would not accept the prices that the State had fixed. Among the records of the punishments inflicted, the State is sometimes found resorting to ruthless acts of petty tyranny, condemning in one case to a fine of one thousand francs a woman who had ventured to sell a candle for fivepence, sentencing to a fine of forty thousand francs a bar-keeper who had charged tenpence for a glass of wine, and ordering a grocer who had sold sugar-candy at a lower rate than the authorities approved, to pay one hundred thousand francs as penalty, and to be imprisoned until the end of the war!

Of course these arbitrary measures defeated their own ends. Instead of making food and clothing plentiful, instead of keeping prices down, they destroyed credit, ruined enterprise, and resulted in scarcity and dearth. In spite of all the efforts of the Government, the value of the Assignats steadily declined. Everyone was compelled to use them, and to accept them at their nominal value; but everyone knew that they were really worthless. For a time commercial prosperity disappeared. On all sides factories failed, and workmen fell out of employment. Arthur Young declared that the Revolution did more harm to manufactures than to any other branch of industry in France. The proscription of the rich wrought havoc with the industries of Paris and Lyons. The disturbances in the West Indies dealt a heavy blow at colonial trade. The war with England closed French ports and damaged French shipping. The war with the other Powers shut the Continent to French goods. Observers in Bordeaux, in Nantes and in Strasbourg, echoed the same complaints. 'Commerce here is annihilated,' wrote a Swiss banker from Paris in November, 1793.

And as it was with the capitalists, so it was with the tradesmen, the farmers and labourers too. No one would bow to regulations which cut at the profits of his calling. All sorts of devices were resorted to to evade them. Shopmen kept only a limited stock on hand, or disposed of their goods secretly to customers who would pay a handsome price. Smuggling steadily increased. Farmers and peasants refused to bring their grain to market for the prices fixed by the State. They sold it privately or hoarded it up. If defeated in these devices, they refused to work at all, and let their crops stand unharvested in the fields. 'The bakers,' wrote a Jacobin agent from Grenoble in the winter of 1793, 'have stopped baking altogether.' 'The fishermen,' wrote another from Marseilles, 'no longer go to sea.' Of course the State punished them severely for their contumacy, but they would rather go to prison than labour for no adequate reward. And so the working classes passed into the ranks of the suspected, and the 'aristocrats and fanatics' arrested consisted largely of shopkeepers and working men. One list of prisoners at Strasbourg, for instance, contained the names of a number of women whose husbands were tailors, upholsterers and chimney-sweeps, while in country districts the farmers and peasants took the place of the mechanics and tradesmen in the towns. In the summer of 1794, the prisons of France were so full of country people that the Convention became alarmed at the neglect of the land, and ordered the provisional release in view of the harvest of large numbers of labouring men.

The effect of the reckless action of the State and of the resistance which it provoked was to produce a general dearth. In 1792 and 1793 the harvests were by no means bad. But the utter depreciation of the currency, the insecurity of property, the frequent seizure of grain, and the attempts of the authorities, especially in Paris, to fix wages and to manipulate prices, all tended to lessen the supply and to check the free circulation of food. In the winter of 1793-94 the signs of distress became alarming. From Lyons and Marseilles, from Rouen and Bordeaux, there came nothing but reports of famine. 'In the district of Cadillac,' said Tallien in March, 1794, 'absolute dearth prevails; the citizens fight for the grass in the fields.' 'In many of the Indre districts,' wrote another representative, 'food is entirely wanting.' In Paris, where so many indigent were gathered, the danger, in spite of the efforts of the municipality, was more noticeable still. Bread was bad and scanty. Meat was terribly scarce. Vegetables and groceries were exceedingly dear. The long queues of hungry men and women, which formed every night outside the provision-shops of Paris, waiting for the dawn, added a grim feature to Parisian life. 'If this lasts,' said the workmen, according to the testimony of one observer, 'we shall have to cut each other's throats, since there is nothing left to live on.' Beggars multiplied on every side. Those who knew the streets of Paris spoke of the crowds of famished faces, 'everywhere presenting an image of despair,'—into such misery had the all-governing State reduced them, the State which only wished to be omnipotent for the noble purpose of regenerating man.