without any preliminary trial." For a man to become a good cut-throat, he must first get intoxicated;[33108] such was the course pursued in Paris by those who did the work in September: the revolutionary government being an organized, prolonged and permanent Septembrisade, most of its agents are obliged to drink hard.[33109]--For the same reasons when the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to steal, presents itself, they steal.--At first, during six months, and up to the decree assigning them pay, the revolutionary committees "take their pay themselves;"[33110] they then add to their legal salary of three and five francs a day about what they please: for it is they who assess the extraordinary taxes, and often, as at Montbrison, "without making any list or record of collections." On Frimaire 16, year II., the financial committee reports that "the collection and application of extraordinary taxes is unknown to the government; that it was impossible to supervise them, the National treasury having received no sums whatever arising from these taxes."[33111] Two years after, four years after, the accounts of revolutionary taxation of forced loans, and of pretended voluntary gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of accounts rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be verified; the rest are irregular and worthless. Besides, in many cases, not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcoming, but, again, it is proved that the sums collected disappeared wholly or in part. At Villefranche, out of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand francs collected, the collector of the district deposited but forty-two thousand; at Baugency, out of more than five hundred thousand francs collected, there were only fifty thousand deposited; at la Réole, out of at least five hundred thousand francs collected, there were but twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty deposited. "The rest," says the collector at Villefranche, "were wasted by the Committee of Surveillance." "The tax-collectors," writes the national-agent at Orleans, "after having employed terror gave themselves up to orgies and are now building palaces."[33112]--As to the expenses which they claim, they almost always consist of "indemnities to members of revolutionary committees, to patriots, and to defray the cost of patriotic missions," to maintaining and repairing the meeting-rooms of the popular clubs, to military expeditions, and to succoring the poor, so that three or four hundred millions in gold or silver, extorted before the end of 1793, hundreds of millions of assignats extorted in 1793 and 1794, in short, almost the entire product of the total extraordinary taxation[33113] was consumed on the spot and by the sans-culottes. Seated at the public banqueting table they help themselves first, and help themselves copiously.