rgent snatches up a rifle. The truth is queer and
profound, I can tell you. The Lyons trade is a soulless trade. They
will not weave a yard of silk unless they have the order and are sure of
payment. If orders fall off; the workmen may starve; they can scarcely
earn a living, convicts are better off. After the Revolution of July,
the distress reached such a pitch that the Lyons weavers--the _canuts_,
as they call them--hoisted the flag, 'Bread or Death!' a proclamation
of a kind which compels the attention of a government. It was really
brought about by the cost of living at Lyons; Lyons must build theatres
and become a metropolis, forsooth, and the octroi duties accordingly
were insanely high. The Republicans got wind of this bread riot, they
organized the _canuts_ in two camps, and fought among themselves. Lyons
had her Three Days, but order was restored, and the silk weavers went
back to their dens. Hitherto the _canut_ had been honest; the silk for
his work was weighed out to him in hanks, and he brought back the same
weight of woven tissue; now he made up his mind that the silk merchants
were oppressing him; he put honesty out at the door and rubbed oil on
his fingers. He still brought back weight for weight, but he sold the
silk represented by the oil; and the French silk trade has suffered from
a plague of 'greased silks,' which might have ruined Lyons and a whole
branch of French commerce. The masters and the government, instead
of removing the causes of the evil, simply drove it in with a violent
external application. They ought to have sent a clever man to Lyons,
one of those men that are said to have no principle, an Abbe Terray; but
they looked at the affair from a military point of view. The result of
the troubles is a _gros de Naples_ at forty _sous_ per yard; the silk
is sold at this day, I dare say, and the masters no doubt have hit
upon some new check upon the men. This method of manufacturing without
looking ahead ought never to have existed in the country where one of
the greatest citizens that France has ever known ruined himself to keep
six thousand weavers in work without orders. Richard Lenoir fed them,
and the government was thickheaded enough to allow him to suffer
from the fall of the prices of textile fabrics brought about by the
Revolution of 1814. Richard Lenoir is the one case of a merchant that
deserves a statue. And yet the subscription set on foot for him has no
subscribers, while the fund