service of the armies, were put in requisition, which meant that their owners were compelled to sell to the Government at the maximum price, and to take in payment assignats at their nominal value. Exactly the same course was pursued with regard to labour. A maximum was fixed for wages, the most the workman might demand being the wage he received in 1790, with the addition of half as much again. Workmen, like goods, were then put in requisition, and employed by thousands in making of arms, building of ships, repairing of roads, and other services of the same character. In every transaction the State thus gained at the expense of individuals, since the assignats, in which all payments were made, were now worth only 33 per cent. of their nominal value. Together with the requisition and maximum laws were passed others, which had for their direct object the suppression of speculation on the fluctuation in prices and in the value of the paper money. Capitalists, bankers, merchants engaged in foreign commerce, and speculators of every description, were denounced as aristocrats and enemies of their country, and in order the more effectually to suppress their transactions, the idea was entertained of breaking off commercial and financial relations between France and foreign countries. It was rendered a capital offence to refuse to accept assignats in payment of goods, or to offer or accept a higher price in them than in metal money. Financial and commercial companies were dissolved. The investment of capital in foreign countries was prohibited, the Exchange closed, the export of nearly all articles of French growth and manufacture forbidden, and the mere possession of articles grown or manufactured in Great Britain declared a crime. All the laws here described were enforced by fines, confiscations, the prison, and the guillotine. They succeeded in their immediate end. Wherever buying and selling went on in public the paper money was taken at par, and the Government was able to go on incessantly increasing the number of notes in circulation without meeting a corresponding rise in prices. But this result was only obtained at the cost of the destruction of private enterprise, the ruin of hundreds of traders and manufacturers, a lavish waste of the capital of the country, and the infliction of an enormous amount of suffering. Little foreign trade remained except what the Government itself carried on, and the only manufactures which flourished were those of arms and war material. Trade and agriculture became the most dangerous occupations in which it was possible to engage.