anufactories of rich
fabrics and furniture, and other artistic, elegant and fashionable
articles.

* After the insurrection of the blacks in St. Domingo, and other
troubles in the West Indies, the great colonial trade and remarkable
prosperity of Nantes and Bordeaux, including all the industrial
enterprises by which the production, transportation and circulation of
cotton, sugar and coffee were affected;[4215]

* After the declaration of war with England, the shipping interest;

* After the declaration of war with all Europe, the commerce of the
continent.[4216]

Failure after failure, an universal crash, utter cessation of
extensively organized and productive labor: instead of productive
industries, I see none now but destructive industries, those of the
agricultural and commercial vermin, those of dealers in junk and
speculators who dismantle mansions and abbeys, and who demolish chateaux
and churches so as to sell the materials as cheap as dirt, who bargain
away national possessions, so as to make a profit on the transaction.
Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt, needy and urged
on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do to an estate held
under a precarious title and of suspicious acquirement, which he has no
idea of keeping, and from which, meanwhile, he derives every possible
benefit:[4217] not only does he put no spokes in the mill-wheel,
no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the roof, but he buys no manure,
exhausts the soil, devastates the forest, alienates the fields, and
dismembers the entire farm, damaging the ground and the stock of tools
and injuring the dwelling by selling its mirrors, lead and iron, and
oftentimes the window-shutters and doors. He turns all into cash, no
matter how, at the expense of the domain, which he leaves in a run-down
condition, unfurnished and for a long time unproductive. In like manner,
the communal possessions, ravaged, pillaged and then pieced out
and divided off, are so many organisms which are sacrificed for the
immediate relief of the village poor, but of course to the detriment of
their future productiveness and an abundant yield.[4218]

Alone, amongst these millions of men who have stopped working, or work
the wrong way, the petty cultivator labors to advantage; free of taxes,
of tithes and of feudal imposts, possessing a scrap of ground which he
has obtained for almost nothing or without stretching his purse strings,
he works in good spi