tions
affected in a mass.--proportion of the lowly in the
proscription lists. How the revolutionary laws specially
affect those who are prominent among the people.

Not that the ravages which they make stop there! The principle extended
far beyond that. The fundamental rule, according to Jacobin maxims,
is that every public or private advantage which any citizen enjoys and
which is not enjoyed by another citizen, is illegitimate.--On Ventose
19, year II., Henriot, general in command, having surrounded the
Palais Royal and made a sweep of "suspects," renders an account of his
expedition as follows:[4187] "One hundred and thirty muscadins have been
arrested.... These gentlemen are transferred to the Petits-Peres. Being
well-fed and plump, they cannot be sans-culottes." Henriot was right,
for, to live well is incivique. Whoever lays in stores of provisions is
criminal, even if he has gone a good ways for them, even if he has not
overpaid the butcher of his quarter, even if he has not diminished by
an ounce of meat the ration of his neighbor; when he is found out, he
is punished and his hoard confiscated. "A citizen[4188] had a little
pig brought to him from a place six leagues from Paris, and killed it
at once. Three hours afterwards, the pig was seized by commissioners and
distributed among the people, without the owner getting a bit of it;"
moreover, the said owner "was imprisoned."--He is a monopolist! To
Jacobin people, to empty stomachs, there is no greater crime; this
misdeed, to their imaginations, explains the arrest of Hebert, their
favorite: "It is said at the Halle (the covered Paris market)[4189] that
he has monopolized a brother of the order of Saint-Antoine[4190] as well
as a pot of twenty-five pounds of Brittany butter," which is enough;
they immediately and "unanimously consign Pere Duchesne to the
guillotine." (Note that the Pere Duchesne, founded by Hebert, was
the most radical and revolutionary journal. (SR.)--Of all privileges,
accordingly, that of having a supply of food is the most offensive; "it
is now necessary for one who has two dishes to give one of them to him
who has none;"[4191] every man who manages to eat more than another is
a robber; for, in the first place, he robs the community, the sole
legitimate owner of aliments, and next, he robs, and personally, all who
have less to eat than he has.

The same rule applies to other things of which the possession is
either agreeable