er, "considering that the thirst for gold has always controlled the
brewers of the commune," they are condemned to 250,000 livres fine, to
be paid in three days under penalty of being declared rebels, with
the confiscation of their possessions;" then, upon another similar
consideration, the bakers and flour dealers are taxed three hundred
thousand livres.[41129] In addition to this, writes Representative
Milhaud, at Guyardin,[41130] "We have ordered the arrest of all bankers,
stock-brokers and notaries.... All their wealth is confiscated; we
estimate the sums under seal at 2 or 3 millions in coin, and 15 or 16
in assignats." There is the same haul of the net at Paris. By order of
Lhuillier, procureur of the department, "seals are placed in the
offices of all the bankers, stock-brokers, silversmiths, etc.," and they
themselves are shut up in the Madelonettes; a few days after, that they
may pay their drafts, they are let out as a favor, but on condition that
they remain under arrest in their homes, at their own expense,
under guard of two good sans-culottes.[41131] In like manner, at
Nantes,[41132] Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, the prisons are filled
and the guillotine works according to the categories. At one time they
are "all of the Grand Theatre," or the principal merchants, "to
the number of more than 200," are incarcerated at Bordeaux in one
night.[41133] At another time, Paris provides a haul of farmer-generals
or parliamentarians. Carts leave Toulouse conveying its parliamentarians
to Paris to undergo capital punishment. At Aix, writes an agent,[41134]

"the guillotine is going to work on former lawyers a few hundred heads
legally taken off will do the greatest good."

And, as new crimes require new terms to designate them, they add to
"incivisme" and "moderantisme," the term "negociantisme," all of which
are easily stated and widespread crimes.

"The rich and the merchants," writes an observer,[41135] "are here, as
elsewhere, born enemies of equality and lovers of hideous federalism,
the only aristocracy that remains to be crushed out."

Barras, with still greater precision, declares in the tribune that,
"commerce is usurious, monarchical and anti-revolutionary."[41136]
Considered in itself, it may be defined as an appeal to bad instincts;
it seems a corrupting, incivique, anti-fraternal institution, many
Jacobins having proposed either to interdict it to private persons and
attribute it wholly to the State