states, in the first place, "that Frenchmen are equals and brethren,
and that they should give each other aid;" and that "the masters
should share with their fellows, especially this year, which is one of
scarcity." In the next place, it is written that "all property belongs
to the nation," and that is the reason why "it has taken the possessions
of the Church." Now, all Frenchmen compose the nation, and the
conclusion is clearly apparent. Since, in the eyes of the tailor, the
property of individual Frenchmen belongs to all the French, he, the
tailor, has a right to at least the quota which belongs to him.--One
travels fast and far on this downhill road, for every mob considers
that this means immediate enjoyment, and enjoyment according to its own
ideas. There is no care for neighbors or for consequences, even when
imminent and physical, and in twenty places the confiscated property
perishes in the hands of the usurpers.
This voluntary destruction of property can be best observed in the
third department, that of Corrèze.[3277] Not only have the peasants here
refused to pay rents from the beginning of the Revolution; not only have
they "planted maypoles, supplied with iron hooks, to hang the first
one that dared to claim or to pay them;" not only are violent acts of
every description committed "by entire communes," "the National Guards
of the small communes participating in them;" not only do the culprits,
whose arrest is ordered, remain at liberty, while "nothing is spoken
of but the hanging of the constables who serve writs," but farther,
together with the ownership of the water-sources, the power of
collecting, directing, and distributing the water is overthrown, and, in
a country of in a country of steep slopes, the consequences of such
an operation may be imagined. Three leagues from Tulle, in a forming a
semi-circle, a pond twenty feet in depth, and covering an area of three
hundred acres, was enclosed by a broad embankment on the side of a
very deep gorge, which was completely covered with houses, mills, and
cultivation. On the 17th of April, 1791, a troop of five hundred armed
men assembled by the beat of a drum, and collected from three villages
in the vicinity, set themselves to demolish the dike. The proprietor,
M. de Sedières, a substitute-deputy in the National Assembly, is not
advised of it until eleven o'clock in the evening. Mounting his horse,
along with his guests and domestics, he makes a charge on the insane
wretches, and, with the aid of pistol and gun shots, disperses them. It
was time, for the trench they had dug was already eight feet deep,
and the water was nearly on a level with it: a half-hour later and the
terrible rolling mass of waters would have poured out on the inhabitants
of the gorge.--But such vigorous strokes, which are rare and hardly ever
successful, are no defense against universal and continuous attacks.
The regular troops and the gendarmerie, both of which are in the way of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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