The things we do!

In vain did it
double the bounty on imports, resort to all sorts of expedients,
involve itself in debt, and expend over forty millions of francs to
furnish France with wheat. In vain do individuals, princes,
noblemen, bishops, chapters, and communities multiply their
charities. The Archbishop of Paris incurring a debt of 400,000
livres, one rich man distributing 40,000 francs the morning after
the hailstorm, and a convent of Bernardines feeding twelve hundred
poor persons for six weeks[2]. But it had been too devastating.
Neither public measures nor private charity could meet the
overwhelming need. In Normandy, where the last commercial treaty
had ruined the manufacture of linen and of lace trimmings, forty
thousand workmen were out of work. In many parishes one-fourth of
the population[3] are beggars. Here, "nearly all the inhabitants,
not excepting the farmers and landowners, are eating barley bread
and drinking water;" there, "many poor creatures have to eat oat
bread, and others soaked bran, which has caused the death of several
children.


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