during the following
month, buyers find on his unfurnished counters nothing but rubbish and
refuse.

In like manner, after the proclamation of the maximum,[4242] the peasant
refuses to bring his produce to market, while the revolutionary army is
not everywhere on hand to take it from him by force: he leaves his crop
unthrashed as long as he can, and complains of not finding the men to
thrash it. If necessary, he hides it or feeds it out to his animals. He
often barters it away for wood, for a side of bacon or in payment for
a day's work. At night, he carts it off six leagues to a neighboring
district, where the local maximum is fixed at a higher rate. He
knows who, in his own vicinity, still has specie in his pocket and he
underhandedly supplies him with his stores. He especially conceals his
superabundance and, as formerly, pretends to be poor and suffering.
He is on good terms with the village authorities, with the mayor and
national agent who are as interested as he is in evading the law, and,
on a bribe being necessary, he gives it. At last, he allows himself
to be sued, and his property attached; he goes to prison and tires the
authorities out with his obstinacy. Hence, from week to week, less flour
and grain and fewer cattle come to market, while meat becomes scarcer
at the butcher's, and bread at the baker's.--Having thus paralyzed
the lesser organs of supply and demand the Jacobins now have only to
paralyze labor itself, the skilled hands, the active and vigorous arms.
This is simply done by replacing the independent private workshop by the
compulsory national workshop in this way replacing piece-work by work by
the day, and the attentive, energetic workman who minds his business and
expects to earn money in return by inattentive apathic workmen pressed
into a poorly paid service but paid even when they botch the job or laze
about.--This is what the Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the services
of all sorts of laborers,[4243] "all who help handle, transport and
retail produce and articles of prime necessity," "country people who
usually get in the crops," and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers,
carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths and the
rest.--At every point of the social organism, the same principle
is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an external,
artificial and mechanical constraint for the inward, natural and
animating stimulant, and you get nothing but an