[33] It is admitted
in the rural districts that each municipality has the right to
isolate itself from the rest. It is admitted in the towns that each
town has the right to derive its provisions from the country. It is
admitted by the indigent of each commune that the commune must
provide bread gratis or at a cheap rate. On the strength of this
there is a shower of stones and a fusillade; department against
department, district against district, canton against canton, all
fight for food, and the strongest get it and keep it for themselves.
- I have simply described the North, where, for the past three
years, the crops are good. I have omitted the South, where trade is
interrupted on the canal of the Deux Mers, where the procureur-
syndic of Aude has lately been massacred for trying to secure the
passage of a convoy; where the harvest has been poor; where, in many
places, bread costs eight sous the pound; where, in almost every
department, a bushel of wheat is sold twice as dear as in the North!
Strange phenomenon! and the most instructive of all, for in it we
see down into the depths of humanity; for, as on a raft of
shipwrecked beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of
nature.
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