lived on wages were seriously affected. Wages had indeed risen, but not in proportion to prices. Starvation prices prevailed. Workmen earned from five to eleven shillings a day in paper money, while a multitude of State officials, pensioners and creditors, received no more than from three to six shillings a day. Yet at this time a pound of bread cost eight shillings, of rice thirteen, of sugar seventeen, and other articles were all proportionately dear. It is literally true that more than half the population of Paris was only kept alive by occasional distributions of meat and other articles at low prices, and the daily distribution of bread at three-halfpence a pound. In February, however, this source of relief threatened to fail. Farmers preferred to send their corn anywhere else than to Paris, where only paper money was to be had. It was only with extreme difficulty that the Government, which since the annihilation of the Commune had supplied Paris with bread, performed its task. The rations fell from one pound to half a pound, and soon to a few ounces per head. Numerous deaths took place, the result of destitution or actual starvation. An insurrection, however, though constantly threatened, for weeks failed to break out. One cause was that the people had grown hopeless of improving their condition by insurrection; another, that those journalists, clerks, and others, who at the opening of the revolution had incited popular movements, were now, although suffering themselves, found on the other side, and were prepared to fight in defence of the Convention, which they none the less detested, sooner than endure a revival of the Terror. Material suffering offered, however, a ready handle for Terrorist agitators; and as the peril of insurrection increased, so too, within the Convention, did the violence of party strife. The Mountain, threatened with proscription, sought to turn the position of the right and to obtain credit outside, by demanding the immediate end of provisional government and the putting in force of the democratic constitution promulgated by the Convention in 1793, after the ejection of the Girondists. On April 1, or Germinal 12, bread riots, begun by women, broke out in every section. Bands collected and forced their way into the Convention, shouting for bread, but offering no violence to the deputies. Occasionally the demand was made for the release of imprisoned patriots and for the Constitution of 1793. The crowd was already dispersing when forces arrived from the sections and cleared the House. The insurrection was a spontaneous rising for bread, without method or combination. The Terrorists had sought, but vainly, to obtain direction of it. Had they succeeded, the Mountain would have had an opportunity of proscribing the right. Their failure gave the right the opportunity of proscribing the left. The transportation to Cayenne of Billaud, Collot, Barère, and Vadier was decreed, and the arrest of