- Wheat remains in the
barn, or is secreted, or is kept waiting, and only reaches by
stealth the hands of those who are rich enough to pay, not only its
price, but the extra cost of the risk. Thus forced into a narrow
channel, it rises to a rate which the depreciation of the assignats
augments, its dearness being not only maintained, but ever on the
increase. -- Thereupon popular instinct invents for the cure of the
evil a remedy which serves to aggravate it: henceforth, wheat must
not travel; it is impounded in the canton in which it is gathered.
At Laon, "the people have sworn to die rather than let their food be
carried off." At ?tampes, to which the municipality of Angers
dispatches an administrator of its hospital to buy two hundred and
fifty sacks of flour, the commission cannot be executed, the
delegate not even daring to avow for several days the object of his
coming; all he can do is "to visit incognito, and at night, the
different flour-dealers in the valley, who would offer to furnish
the supply, but fear for their lives and dare not even leave their
houses.
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