But judge if France, if Paris sat idle, all this while! Addresses from far and near flow in: for our Commons have now grown organic enough to open letters. Or indeed to cavil at them! Thus poor Marquis de Brézé, Supreme Usher, Master of Ceremonies, or whatever his title was, writing about this time on some ceremonial matter, sees no harm in winding up with a “Monsieur, yours with sincere attachment.”—‘To whom does it address itself, this sincere attachment?’ inquires Mirabeau. ‘To the Dean of the Tiers-Etat.’—‘There is no man in France entitled to write that,’ rejoins he; whereat the Galleries and the World will not be kept from applauding.[143] Poor De Brézé! These Commons have a still older grudge at him; nor has he yet done with them. In another way, Mirabeau has had to protest against the quick suppression of his Newspaper, _Journal of the States-General;_—and to continue it under a new name. In which act of valour, the Paris Electors, still busy redacting their _Cahier_, could not but support him, by Address to his Majesty: they claim utmost “provisory freedom of the press;” they have spoken even about demolishing the Bastille, and erecting a Bronze Patriot King on the site!—These are the rich Burghers: but now consider how it went, for example, with such loose miscellany, now all grown eleutheromaniac, of Loungers, Prowlers, social Nondescripts (and the distilled Rascality of our Planet), as whirls forever in the Palais Royal;—or what low infinite groan, first changing into a growl, comes from Saint-Antoine, and the Twenty-five Millions in danger of starvation! There is the indisputablest scarcity of corn;—be it Aristocrat-plot, D’Orléans-plot, of this year; or drought and hail of last year: in city and province, the poor man looks desolately towards a nameless lot. And this States-General, that could make us an age of gold, is forced to stand motionless; cannot get its powers verified! All industry necessarily languishes, if it be not that of making motions.