Already many of our best
cultivators are giving up their business, while others threaten to
do the same in case these disorders continue." - What is worse
still is the fact that in these outrages most of the bandits were
"in the national uniform." The most ignorant, the poorest, and most
fanatical of the National Guard thus enlist for the sake of plunder.
It is so natural for men to believe in their right to that of which
they feel the need, that the possessors of wheat thus become its
monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich the property of the
poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate the forest of
Bruy?res-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, nor work -
necessity knows no law."
The necessaries of life are not to be had cheap under such a system.
There is too much anxiety, and property is too precarious; there are
too many obstacles to commerce ; purchases, sales, shipments,
arrivals and payments are too uncertain. How are goods to be stored
and transported in a country where neither the central government,
the local authorities, the National Guard, nor the regular troops
perform their duties, and where every transaction in produce, even
the most legal and the most serviceable, is subject to the caprice
of a dozen villains whom the populace obey.
Pages:
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639