The Executive.
May we not conjecture therefore that round this grand enterprise
of Making the Constitution there will, as heretofore, very
strange embroilments gather, and questions and interests
complicate themselves; so that after a few or even several
months, the Convention will not have settled every thing? Alas, a
whole tide of questions comes rolling, boiling; growing ever
wider, without end! Among which, apart from this question of
September and Anarchy, let us notice those, which emerge oftener
than the others, and promise to become Leading Questions: of the
Armies; of the Subsistences; thirdly, of the Dethroned King.
As to the Armies, Public Defence must evidently be put on a
proper footing; for Europe seems coalising itself again; one is
apprehensive even England will join it. Happily Dumouriez
prospers in the North;—nay what if he should prove too
prosperous, and become _Liberticide_, Murderer of
Freedom!—Dumouriez prospers, through this winter season; yet not
without lamentable complaints. Sleek Pache, the Swiss
Schoolmaster, he that sat frugal in his Alley, the wonder of
neighbours, has got lately—whither thinks the Reader? To be
Minister of war! Madame Roland, struck with his sleek ways,
recommended him to her Husband as Clerk: the sleek Clerk had no
need of salary, being of true Patriotic temper; he would come
with a bit of bread in his pocket, to save dinner and time; and,
munching incidentally, do three men’s work in a day, punctual,
silent, frugal,—the sleek Tartuffe that he was. Wherefore Roland,
in the late Overturn, recommended him to be War-Minister. And
now, it would seem, he is secretly undermining Roland; playing
into the hands of your hotter Jacobins and September Commune; and
cannot, like strict Roland, be the _Veto des Coquins!_[576]
How the sleek Pache might mine and undermine, one knows not well;
this however one does know: that his War-Office has become a den
of thieves and confusion, such as all men shudder to behold. That
the Citizen Hassenfratz, as Head-Clerk, sits there in _bonnet
rouge_, in rapine, in violence, and some Mathematical
calculation; a most insolent, red-nightcapped man. That Pache
munches his pocket-loaf, amid head-clerks and sub-clerks, and has
spent all the War-Estimates: that Furnishers scour in gigs, over
all districts of France, and drive bargains;—and lastly that the
Army gets next to no furniture. No shoes, though it is winter; no
clothes; some have not even arms: “In the Army of the South,”
complains an honourable Member, “there are thirty thousand pairs
of breeches wanting,”—a most scandalous want.
Roland’s strict soul is sick to see the course things take: but
what can he do? Keep his own Department strict; rebuke, and
repress wheresoever possible; at lowest, complain. He can
complain in Letter after Letter, to a National Convention, to
France, to Posterity, the Universe; grow ever more querulous
indignant;—till at last may he not grow wearisome? For is not
this continual text of his, at bottom a rather barren one: How
astonishing that in a time of Revolt and abrogation of all Law
but Cannon Law, there should be such Unlawfulness? Intrepid
Veto-of-Scoundrels, narrow-faithful, respectable, methodic man,
work thou in that manner, since happily it is thy manner, and
wear thyself away; though ineffectual, not profitless in it—then
nor _now!_—The brave Dame Roland, bravest of all French women,
begins to have misgivings: the figure of Danton has too much of
the “Sardanapalus character,” at a Republican Rolandin
Dinner-table: Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, proses sad stuff about
a Universal Republic, or union of all Peoples and Kindreds in one
and the same Fraternal Bond; of which Bond, how it is to be
_tied_, one unhappily sees not.
It is also an indisputable, unaccountable or accountable fact
that Grains are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Riots for grain,
tumultuous Assemblages demanding to have the price of grain fixed
abound far and near. The Mayor of Paris and other poor Mayors are
like to have their difficulties. Pétion was re-elected Mayor of
Paris; but has declined; being now a Convention Legislator. Wise
surely to decline: for, besides this of Grains and all the rest,
there is in these times an Improvised insurrectionary Commune
passing into an Elected legal one; getting their accounts
settled,—not without irritancy! Pétion has declined: nevertheless
many do covet and canvass. After months of scrutinising,
balloting, arguing and jargoning, one Doctor Chambon gets the
post of honour: who will not long keep it; but be, as we shall
see, literally _crushed_ out of it.[577]
Think also if the private Sansculotte has not his difficulties,
in a time of dearth! Bread, according to the People’s-Friend, may
be some “six sous per pound, a day’s wages some fifteen;” and
grim winter here. How the Poor Man continues living, and so
seldom starves, by miracle! Happily, in these days, he can
enlist, and have himself shot by the Austrians, in an unusually
satisfactory manner: for the Rights of Man.—But Commandant
Santerre, in this so straitened condition of the flour-market,
and state of Equality and Liberty, proposes, through the
Newspapers, two remedies, or at least palliatives: _First_, that
all classes of men should live, two days of the week, on
potatoes; then _second_, that every man should hang his dog.
Hereby, as the Commandant thinks, the saving, which indeed he
computes to so many sacks, would be very considerable. A
cheerfuller form of inventive-stupidity than Commandant
Santerre’s dwells in no human soul. Inventive-stupidity, imbedded
in health, courage and good-nature: much to be commended. ‘My
whole strength,’ he tells the Convention once, ‘is, day and
night, at the service of my fellow-Citizens: if they find me
worthless, they will dismiss me; I will return and brew
beer.’[578]
Or figure what correspondences a poor Roland, Minister of the
Interior, must have, on this of Grains alone! Free-trade in
Grain, impossibility to fix the Prices of Grain; on the other
hand, clamour and necessity to fix them: Political Economy
lecturing from the Home Office, with demonstration clear as
Scripture;—ineffectual for the empty National Stomach. The Mayor
of Chartres, like to be eaten himself, cries to the Convention:
the Convention sends honourable Members in Deputation; who
endeavour to feed the multitude by miraculous spiritual methods;
but cannot. The multitude, in spite of all Eloquence, come
bellowing round; will have the Grain-Prices fixed, and at a
moderate elevation; or else—the honourable Deputies hanged on the
spot! The honourable Deputies, reporting this business, admit
that, on the edge of horrid death, they did fix, or affect to fix
the Price of Grain: for which, be it also noted, the Convention,
a Convention that will not be trifled with, sees good to
reprimand them.[579]
But as to the origin of these Grain Riots, is it not most
probably your secret Royalists again? Glimpses of Priests were
discernible in this of Chartres,—to the eye of Patriotism. Or
indeed may not “the root of it all lie in the Temple Prison, in
the heart of a perjured King,” well as we guard him?[580] Unhappy
perjured King!—And so there shall be Baker’s Queues, by and by,
more sharp-tempered than ever: on every Baker’s door-rabbet an
iron ring, and coil of rope; whereon, with firm grip, on this
side and that, we form our Queue: but mischievous deceitful
persons cut the rope, and our Queue becomes a ravelment;
wherefore the coil must be made of iron chain.[581] Also there
shall be Prices of Grain well fixed; but then no grain
purchasable by them: bread not to be had except by Ticket from
the Mayor, few ounces per mouth daily; after long swaying, with
firm grip, on the chain of the Queue. And Hunger shall stalk
direful; and Wrath and Suspicion, whetted to the Preternatural
pitch, shall stalk;—as those other preternatural “shapes of Gods
in their wrathfulness” were discerned stalking, “in glare and
gloom of that fire-ocean,” when Troy Town fell!—