ame with money. Not only do they extort from the Assembly
850,000 francs a months, with arrears from the 1st of January, 1792,
more than six millions in all, to defray the expenses of their military
police, which means to pay their bands,[3126] but again, "invested with
the municipal scarf," they seize, "in the public establishment belonging
to the nation, all furniture, and whatever is of most value." "In one
building alone, they carry off the value of 100,000 crowns."[3127]
Elsewhere, in the hands of the treasurer of the civil list, they
appropriate to themselves, a box of jewels, other precious objects, and
340, 000 francs.[3128] Their commissioners bring in from Chantilly
three wagons each drawn by three horses "loaded with the spoils of M. de
Conde," and they undertake "removing the contents of the houses of
the emigres."[3129] They confiscate in the churches of Paris "the
crucifixes, music-stands, bells, railings, and every object in bronze or
of iron, chandeliers, cups, vases, reliquaries, statues, every article
of plate," as well "on the altars as in the sacristies,"[3130] and we
can imagine the enormous booty obtained; to cart away the silver plate
belonging to the single church of Madeleine-de-la-ville required a
vehicle drawn by four horses.--Now they use all this money, so freely
seized, as freely as they do power itself. One fills his pockets in the
Tuileries without the slightest concern; another, in the Garde-Meuble,
rummages secretaries, and carries off a wardrobe with its
contents.[3131] We have already seen that in the depositories of the
Commune "most of the seals are broken," that enormous sums in plate, in
jewels, in gold and silver coin have disappeared. Future inquests and
accounts will charge on the Committee of Supervision, "abstractions,
dilapidations, and embezzlements," in short, "a mass of violations
and breaches of trust."--When one is king, one easily mistakes the
money-drawer of the State for the drawer in which one keeps one's own
money.

Unfortunately, this full possession of public power and the public funds
holds only by a slender thread. Let the evicted and outraged majority
dare, as subsequently at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, to Return to
the section assemblies and revoke the false mandate which they have
arrogated to themselves through fraud and force, and, on the instance,
they again become, through the sovereign will of the people, and by
virtue of their own deed, what they re