first circle of its
Inferno; other circles follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still
and yet more somber; under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the
lowest?

III. Privation.

First and general cause of privations.--The socialist
principle of the Revolutionary government.--Measures against
large as well as small properties.--Expropriation of all
remaining corporations, enormous issues of paper-money.
forced rates of its circulation, forced loans, requisitions
of coin and plate, revolutionary taxes, suppression of
special organs of labor on a large scale.--New measures
against small proprietorship.--The Maximum, requisitions for
food and labor.--Situation of the shop-keeper, cultivator
and laborer.--Effect of the measures on labor on a small
scale. Stoppage of sales.

Obviously, if the people is not being fed properly and in places not at
all, it is because one of the central and most important fibers of the
economical machine has been incapacitated. It is evident that this fiber
controls the sentiment by which man holds on to his property, fears
to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to increase it.[4228]
Obviously in the real human being, such as he actually is made up,
this intense sentiment, tenacious, always stirring and active, is the
magazine of inward energy which provides for three-fourths, almost the
whole, of that unremitting effort, that calculating attention, that
determined perseverance which leads the individual to undergo privation,
to contrive and to exert himself, to turn to profitable account the
labor of his hands, brain and capital, and to produce, save and create
for himself and for others various resources and comforts.

(It is probable that disinterested motives, pure love for one's
neighbor, for humanity, for country, do not form a hundredth part of the
total energy that produces human activity. It must not be forgotten that
the actions of men are alloyed with motives of a lower order, such as
love of fame, the desire of self-admiration and of self-approval, fear
of punishment and hope of reward beyond the grave, all of these being
interested motives, and without which disinterested motives would be
inoperative excepting in two or three souls among ten thousand.[4229])

Thus far, in society as a whole, this sentiment has been only partially
touched, and the injury has mainly been to the well-to-do or rich
classe