- They come by degrees to the
drafting of a tariff for all the valuables they know, proclaiming
the maximum price which an article may reach, and so establishing a
complete code of rural and social economy. We see in the turbulent
and spasmodic wording of this instrument their dispositions and
sentiments, as in a mirror.[14] It is the program of villagers.
Its diverse articles, save local variations, must be executed, now
one and now the other, according to the occasion, the need, and the
time, and, above all, whatever concerns provisions. - The wish, as
usual, is the father of the thought; the peasantry thinks that it is
acting by authority: here, through a decree of the King and the
National Assembly, there, by a commission directly entrusted to the
Comte d'Estr?es. Even before this, in the market-place of Saint-
Amand, "a man jumped on a heap of wheat and cried out, 'In the name
of the King and the nation, wheat at one-half the market-price!"' An
old officer of the Royal Grenadiers, a chevalier of the order of
Saint-Louis, is reported to be marching at the head of several
parishes, and promulgating ordinances in his own name and that of
the King, imposing a fine of eight livres on whoever may refuse to
join him.
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