hose natural
organs which, in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, store,
preserve, exchange and transmit in large quantities; and as an after
effect, embarrass, saturate, or weaken all the lesser subordinate organs
to which the superior ones no longer provide outlets, intermediary
agencies or aliment.

It is now the turn of the small enterprises. Whatever their sufferings
may be they are ordered to carry their work out as in normal times, and
they will be forced to do this. The Convention, pursuing its accustomed
rigid logical course with its usual shortsightedness, lays on them its
violent and inept hands; they are trodden down, trampled upon and mauled
for the purpose of curing them. Farmers are forbidden to sell their
produce except in the markets, and obliged to bring to these a quota of
so many sacks per week, military raids compelling them to furnish their
quotas.[4238] Shopkeepers are ordered "to expose for sale, daily and
publicly, all goods and provisions of prime necessity" that they have
on hand, while a maximum price is established, above which no one shall
sell "bread, flour and grain, vegetables and fruits, wine, vinegar,
cider, beer and brandy, fresh meat, salt meat, pork, cattle, dried,
salted, smoked or pickled fish, butter, honey, sugar, sweet-oil,
lamp-oil, candles, firewood, charcoal and other coal, salt, soap,
soda, potash, leather, iron, steel, castings, lead, brass, hemp, linen,
woolens, canvas and woven stuffs, sabots, shoes and tobacco." Whoever
keeps on hand more than he consumes is a monopolist and commits a
capital crime; the penalty, very severe, is imprisonment or the pillory,
for whoever sells above the established price:[4239] such are the simple
and direct expedients of the revolutionary government, and such is the
character of its inventive faculty, like that of the savage who
hews down a tree to get at its fruit.--Consequently, after the first
application of the "maximum" the shopkeeper is no longer able to carry
on business; his customers, attracted by the sudden depreciation in
price of his wares, flock to his shop and empty it in a few days;[4240]
having sold his goods for half what they cost him,[4241] he has got back
only one-half of his advances; therefore, he can only one-half renew his
assortment, less than a half, since he has not paid his bills, and his
credit is declining, the (Jacobin) representatives on mission having
taken all his coin, plate and assignats. Hence,