No Sugar.
Such are our inward troubles; seen in the Cities of the South;
extant, seen or unseen, in all cities and districts, North as
well as South. For in all are Aristocrats, more or less
malignant; watched by Patriotism; which again, being of various
shades, from light Fayettist-Feuillant down to deep-sombre
Jacobin, has to watch _itself!_
Directories of Departments, what we call County Magistracies,
being chosen by Citizens of a too “active” class, are found to
pull one way; Municipalities, Town Magistracies, to pull the
other way. In all places too are Dissident Priests; whom the
Legislative will have to deal with: contumacious individuals,
working on that angriest of passions; plotting, enlisting for
Coblentz; or suspected of plotting: fuel of a universal
unconstitutional heat. What to do with them? They may be
conscientious as well as contumacious: gently they should be
dealt with, and yet it must be speedily. In unilluminated La
Vendée the simple are like to be seduced by them; many a simple
peasant, a Cathelineau the wool-dealer wayfaring meditative with
his wool-packs, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his head! Two
Assembly Commissioners went thither last Autumn; considerate
Gensonné, not yet called to be a Senator; Gallois, an editorial
man. These Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake and
worked, softly, with judgment; they have hushed down the
irritation, and produced a soft Report,—for the time.
The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace
there; being an able man. He passes these frosty months among the
pleasant people of Niort, occupies “tolerably handsome apartments
in the Castle of Niort,” and tempers the minds of men.[424] Why
is there but one Dumouriez? Elsewhere you find South or North,
nothing but untempered obscure jarring; which breaks forth ever
and anon into open clangour of riot. Southern Perpignan has its
tocsin, by torch light; with rushing and onslaught: Northern Caen
not less, by daylight; with Aristocrats ranged in arms at Places
of Worship; Departmental compromise proving impossible; breaking
into musketry and a Plot discovered![425] Add Hunger too: for
Bread, always dear, is getting dearer: not so much as Sugar can
be had; for good reasons. Poor Simoneau, Mayor of Etampes, in
this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in some riot of
grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasperated People. What
a trade this of Mayor, in these times! Mayor of Saint-Denis hung
at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as we saw long
since; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before dead; and
now this poor Simoneau, the Tanner, of Etampes,—whom legal
Constitutionalism will not forget.
With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily
what they call _déchiré_, torn asunder this poor country: France
and all that is French. For, over seas too come bad news. In
black Saint-Domingo, before that variegated Glitter in the Champs
Elysées was lit for an Accepted Constitution, there had risen,
and was burning contemporary with it, quite another variegated
Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it: of molasses and
ardent-spirits; of sugar-boileries, plantations, furniture,
cattle and men: skyhigh; the Plain of Cap Français one huge whirl
of smoke and flame!
What a change here, in these two years; since that first “Box of
Tricolor Cockades” got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar
Creoles too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles!
Levelling is comfortable, as we often say: levelling, yet only
down to oneself. Your pale-white Creoles, have their
grievances:—and your yellow Quarteroons? And your dark-yellow
Mulattoes? And your Slaves soot-black? Quarteroon Ogé, Friend of
our Parisian Brissotin _Friends of the Blacks_, felt, for his
share too, that Insurrection was the most sacred of duties. So
the tricolor Cockades had fluttered and swashed only some three
months on the Creole hat, when Ogé’s signal-conflagrations went
aloft; with the voice of rage and terror. Repressed, doomed to
die, he took black powder or seedgrains in the hollow of his
hand, this Ogé; sprinkled a film of white ones on the top, and
said to his Judges, ‘Behold they are white;’—then _shook_ his
hand, and said ‘Where are the Whites, _Où sont les Blancs?_’
So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky-windows of
Cap Français, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in
the day, in the night fire; preceded by fugitive shrieking white
women, by Terror and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are
massacring and harrying, with nameless cruelty. They fight and
fire “from behind thickets and coverts,” for the Black man loves
the Bush; they rush to the attack, thousands strong, with
brandished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and
vociferation,—which, if the White Volunteer Company stands firm,
dwindle into staggerings, into quick gabblement, into panic
flight at the first volley, perhaps before it.[426] Poor Ogé
could be broken on the wheel; this fire-whirlwind too can be
abated, driven up into the Mountains: but Saint-Domingo is
_shaken_, as Ogé’s seedgrains were; shaking, writhing in long
horrid death-throes, it is Black without remedy; and remains, as
African Haiti, a monition to the world.
O my Parisian Friends, is not _this_, as well as Regraters and
Feuillant Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar!
The Grocer, palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar _taxé;_
weighed out by Female Patriotism, in instant retail, at the
inadequate rate of twenty-five sous, or thirteen pence a pound.
‘Abstain from it?’ yes, ye Patriot Sections, all ye Jacobins,
abstain! Louvet and Collot-d’Herbois so advise; resolute to make
the sacrifice: though ‘how shall literary men do without coffee?’
Abstain, with an oath; that is the surest![427]
Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest
languish? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen;
denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville traitorous Aristocrat
Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King’s Ships lie rotting
piecemeal in harbour; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough
too, with pay? Little stirring there; if it be not the Brest
Gallies, whip-driven, with their Galley-Slaves,—alas, with some
Forty of our hapless Swiss Soldiers of Château-Vieux, among
others! These Forty Swiss, too mindful of Nanci, do now, in their
red wool caps, tug sorrowfully at the oar; looking into the
Atlantic brine, which reflects only their own sorrowful shaggy
faces; and seem forgotten of Hope.
But, on the whole, may we not say, in fugitive language, that the
French Constitution which shall march is very _rheumatic_, full
of shooting internal pains, in joint and muscle; and will not
march without difficulty?