Assembly,—for meditating by night and consulting by day how the rights of the people may best be attained and secured. Keep the same food to strengthen you for the same purposes. Do not forget your other complaint;—that you are starving: and remember that however much this may be owing to the misrule and courtly extravagance you denounce, the grievance will not be removed by your feeding the fishes with that which your children are craving. I spoke of another kind of treason than that which you suspect, and I see about me too many tokens of its existence;—the treason which would not poison but starve you. “Of the motives of this treason I have nothing to say, for I am wholly ignorant of them. I only insist that there can be no truly patriotic aim under the project of depriving you of the food which is at best but scantily supplied. Do you find in the most plentiful seasons that we have corn enough to make sport with in the river? Are your houses even then so filled with grain that, after feeding your children and domestic animals, you have enough left for the eels of the Seine? Is it to give you this over-supply that the peasantry of the provinces live under roofs of rushes, and couch upon beds of straw? Tell me,—is there in the happiest of times such a superfluity that no Frenchman has a want or wish for more?” Furious cries of denial rose from all sides, joined with curses upon the government which year by year, by its extravagance, snatched the hard-earned bread from the labourer’s hands.