The projets de loi were again referred to the committee. On the following day, the Jacobins once more despatched the envoys of the primary assemblies to the Convention. They came to repeat the demand, not of a partial recruiting, but of the levy en masse, because, said they, half-measures are fatal, because it is easier to move the whole nation than part of its citizens.* "If," added they, " you demand one hundred thousand soldiers, they will not come forward; but millions of men will respond to a general appeal. Let there be no exemption for the citizen physically constituted for arms, be his occupation what it may; let agriculture alone retain the hands that are indispensable for raising the alimentary productions from the earth; let the course of trade be temporarily suspended, let all business cease, let the grand, the only, the universal business of the French be to save the republic."

The Convention could no longer withstand so pressing a summons. Sharing itself the excitement of the petitioners, it directed its committee to retire, and draw up instantly the projet of the levy en masse. The committee returned in a few minutes and presented the following projet, which was adopted amidst universal transport:

"Art. 1. The French people declares, by the organ of its representatives, that it will rise one and all, for the defence of its liberty and of its constitution, and for the final deliverance of its territory from its enemies.

"2. The committee of public welfare will to-morrow present the mode of organization of this great national movement."

By other articles, eighteen representatives were appointed for the purpose of travelling over all France, and directing the envoys of the primary assemblies in their requisitions of men, horses, stores, and provisions. This grand impulse once given, everything would be possible. When it was once declared that all France, men and things, belonged to the government, that government, according to the danger, its own understanding, and its growing energy, could do whatever it deemed useful and indispensable. It was not expedient, it is true, to raise the population en masse, and to interrupt production and even the labours necessary for nutrition; but it was expedient that the government should possess the power of demanding everything, save and except that which was required by the wants of the moment.

The month of August was the epoch of the grand decrees which set all France in motion, all resources in activity, and which terminated to the advantage of the Revolution: its last and its most terrible crisis..

It was requisite at once to set the population afoot, to provide it with arms, and to supply by some new financial measure the expense of this mighty movement. It was requisite to place the paper money in proportion with the price of articles of consumption; it was requisite to distribute the armies and the generals in a manner suitable to each theatre of war, and lastly, to appease the revolutionary indignation by great and terrible executions. We shall presently see what the government did to satisfy at once these urgent wants and those bad passions, to which it was obliged to submit because they were inseparable from the energy which saves a people in danger.

To impose upon each locality a contingent in men was not a proceeding adapted to the circumstances, nor was it worthy of the enthusiasm which it was necessary to suppose the French to possess, in order to inspire them with it. This German

* "The representatives of forty thousand municipalities came to accept the new constitution. Having, when admitted to the bar of the Assembly, signified the consent of the people, they demanded the arrest of all suspected persons, and a general rising of the people. Very well,' exclaimed Danton; let us consent to their wish. The deputies of the primary assemblies have begun to exercise among us the system of terror. I demand that the Convention, by a decree, invest the commissioners of the primary assemblies with the right to make an appeal to the people, to excite the energy of the people, and to put four hundred thousand men into requisition. It is by the sound of our cannon that we must make our constitution known to our enemies! This is the time to take that great and last oath, that we will die, or annihilate the tyrants!" The oath was immediately taken by every one of the deputies and citizens in the hall. Soon after this, the republic had forty armies, and twelve hundred thousand soldiers. France became, on the one hand, a camp and a workshop for the republicans; and, on the other, a prison for the disaffected." - Mignet. E.

FRENCH REVOLUTION.

A general recruiting by lot method of laying upon each country a tax in men, like money, was moreover in contradiction with the principle of the levy en masse. was equally unsuitable. As every one was not called, every one would then have thought how to get exempted, and would have cursed the lot which had obliged him to serve. The levy en masse would throw France into one universal confusion, and excite the sneers of the moderates and of the counter-revolutionists. The committee of public welfare, therefore, devised the expedient that was best adapted to circumstances. This was to make the whole population disposable, to divide it into generations and to send off those generations in the order of age, as they were wanted. The decree of August the 23d ran thus: "From this moment till that when the enemy shall be driven from the territory of the French republic, all the French shall be in permanent requisition for the service of the armies. The young men shall go forth to fight; the married men shall forge the arms and transport the supplies; the women shall make tents, and clothes, and attend on the hospitals; the children shall make lint out of rags; the old men shall cause themselves to be carried to the public places, to excite the courage of the warriors, to preach hatred of kings and love of the republic."

All the young unmarried men or widowers without children, from the age of eighteen to that of twenty-five years, were to compose the first levy, called the first requisition. They were to assemble immediately, not in the chief towns of departments, but in those of districts, for, since the breaking out of federalism, there was a dread of those large assemblages by departments, which gave them a feeling of their strength and an idea of revolt. There was also another motive for adopting The battalions formed in the chief towns this course, namely, the difficulty of collecting in the chief towns sufficient stores of provisions and supplies for large masses. of districts were to commence their military exercises immediately, and to hold themselves in readiness to set out on the very first day. The generation between twenty-five and thirty had notice to prepare itself, and meanwhile it had to do the duty of the interior. Lastly, the remainder, between thirty and sixty, was disposable at the will of the representatives sent to effect this gradual levy. Notwithstanding these dispositions, the instantaneous levy en masse of the whole population was ordered in certain parts, where the danger was most urgent, as La Vendée, Lyons, Toulon, the Rhine, &c.

The means employed for arming, lodging, and subsisting the levies, were adapted to the circumstances. All the horses and beasts of burden which were not necessary either for agriculture or manufactures were required and placed at the disposal of the army commissaries. Muskets were to be given to the generation that was to march: the fowling-pieces and pikes were reserved for the duty of the interior. In the departments where manufactures of arms could be established, the public places and promenades, and the large houses comprehended in the national possessions, were to serve for the erection of workshops. The principal establishment was placed at Paris. The forges were to be erected in the gardens of the Luxembourg, and the machines for boring cannon on the banks of the Seine. All the journeymen gunsmiths were put into requisition, as were also the watch and clockFor this manufacture alone, thirty makers, who had very little work at the moment, and who were capable of exeThese extraordinary cuting certain parts in the manufacture of arms. millions were placed at the disposal of the minister of war. means were to be employed, till the quantity produced should amount to one thousand muskets per day. This great establishment was placed at Paris, because there, under the eyes of the government and the Jacobins, negligence became utterly impossible, and all the prodigies of expedition and energy were insured. Accordingly, this manufacture very soon fulfilled its destination.

As there was a want of saltpetre, an idea occurred to extract it from the mould of cellars. Directions were issued to examine them all, to ascertain whether the soil in which they were sunk contained any portion of that substance or not. In consequence every person was obliged to suffer his cellar to be inspected and dug up, that the mould might be lixiviated when it contained saltpetre.

The houses which had become national property were destined to serve for barracks and magazines. In order to procure supplies for these large armed masses, various measures, not less extraordinary than the preceding, were adopted. The Jacobins proposed that the republic should have a general statement of the articles of consumption drawn up, that it should buy them all, and then undertake the task of distributing them, either by giving them to the soldiers armed for its defence, or by selling them to the other citizens at a moderate price. This propensity to attempt to do everything, to make amends for nature herself, when her course is not according to our wishes, was not so blindly followed as the Jacobins would have desired. In consequence it was ordered that the statements of the articles of consumption already demanded from the municipalities should be forthwith completed and sent to the office of the minister of the interior, in order to furnish a general statistical view of the wants and the resources of the country; that all the corn should be thrashed where that had not yet been done, and that the municipalities themselves should cause it to be thrashed where individuals refused to comply; that the farmers or proprietors of corn should pay the arrears of their contributions, and two-thirds of those for the year 1793, in kind; lastly, that the farmers and managers of the national domains should pay the rents of them in kind.*

The execution of these extraordinary measures could not be otherwise than extraordinary also. Limited powers, confided to local authorities, which would have been stopped every moment by resistance and by remonstrances, which, moreover, feeling a greater or less degree of zeal, would have acted with very unequal energy, would not have been adapted either to the nature of the measures decreed or to their urgency. In this case, therefore, the dictatorship of the commissioners of the Convention was the only engine that could be made use of. They had been employed for the first levy of three hundred thousand men, decreed in March, and they had speedily and completely fulfilled their mission. Sent to the armies, they narrowly watched the generals and their operations, sometimes thwarted consummate commanders, but everywhere kindled zeal and imparted great vigour. Shut up in fortresses, they had sustained heroic sieges in Valenciennes and Mayence; spread through the interior, they had powerfully contributed to quell federalism. They were, therefore, again employed in this instance, and invested with unlimited powers for executing this requisition of men and matériel. Having under their orders the envoys of the primary assemblies, being authorized to direct them at pleasure, and to commit to them a portion of their powers, they had at hand devoted men, perfectly acquainted with the state of each district, and possessing no authority but what they themselves gave them for the necessities of that extraordinary service.

Different representatives had already been sent into the interior, both to La Vendée, and to Lyons and Grenoble, for the purpose of destroying the relics of federalism; eighteen more were appointed, with directions to divide France among them, and to take, in concert with those previously in commission, the needful steps for calling out the young men of the first requisition, for arming them, for supplying them with provisions, and for despatching them to the most suitable points, according to the advice and demands of the generals. They were instructed moreover, to effect the complete submission of the federalist administrations.

With these military plans it was necessary to combine financial measures, in order to defray the expenses of the war. We have seen what was the state of France in this respect. A public debt in disorder, composed of debts of all sorts, of all dates, and which were opposed to the debts contracted under the republic; discredited assignats, to which were opposed specie, foreign paper, the shares of the financial companies, and which were no longer available to the government for paying the public services, or the people for purchasing the commodities which they needed-such was then our situation. What was then to be done in such a conjuncture ?-resort to a loan, or issue assignats? To borrow would be impossible, in the disorder in which the public debt then was, and with the little confidence which the engagements of the republic inspired. To issue assignats would be easy enough; for this nothing more was required than the national printing-office. But, in order to defray the most trifling expenses, it would be necessary to issue enormous quantities of paper, that is to say, five or six times its nominal value, and this would serve to increase the great calamity of its discredit, and to cause a fresh rise in the prices of commodities. We shall see what the genius of necessity suggested to the men who had undertaken the salvation of France.

The first and the most indispensable ineasure was to establish order in the debt, and to prevent its being divided into contracts of all forms and of all periods, and which, by their differences of origin and nature, gave rise to a dangerous and counter-revolutionary stockjobbing. The knowledge of these old titles, their verification, and their classification, required a particular study, and occasioned a frightful complication in the accounts. It was only in Paris that every stockholder could obtain payment of his dividends, and sometimes the division of his credit into several portions obliged him to apply to twenty different paymasters. There was the constituted debt, the debt demandable at a fixed period, the demandable debt proceeding from the liquidation, and in this manner the exchequer was daily liable to demands, and obliged to procure funds for the payment of sums thus falling due. "The debt must be made uniform and republicanised," said Cambon, and he proposed to convert all the contracts of the creditors of the state into an inscription in a great book, which should be called the great Book of the Public Debt. This inscription, and the extract from it which should be delivered to the creditors, were thenceforward to constitute their only titles. To prevent any alarm for the safety of his book, a duplicate was to be deposited in the archives of the treasury; and besides, it was not in greater danger from fire or other accidents than the registers of the notaries. The creditors were, therefore, within a certain time to transmit their titles, that they might be inscribed and then burned. The notaries were ordered to deliver up all the titles deposited in their hands, and to be punished with ten years' imprisonment, if, before they gave them up, they kept or furnished any copies. If the creditor suffered six months to elapse without applying to have his debt inscribed, he was to lose his interest; if he allowed a year to pass away, he was to forfeit the principal. "In this manner," said Cambon, "it will no longer be possible to distinguish the debt contracted by despotism from that which has been contracted since the Revolution; and I would defy Monseigneur le Despotisme, if he were to rise from his grave, to recognise his old debt when it shall be blended with the new one. This operation effected, you will see the capitalist, who wishes for a king because he has a king for his debtor, and who is apprehensive of losing his credit if his debtor is not re-established, wishing well to the republic which will have become his debtor, because he will be afraid of losing his capital in losing it."

This was not the only advantage of that institution, it had others equally great, and it commenced the system of the public credit. The capital of each credit was converted into a perpetual annuity at the rate of five per cent. Thus the creditor of a sum of one thousand francs was inscribed in the great book for an annuity of fifty francs. In this manner, the old debts, some of which bore an usurious interest, while others were liable to unjust deductions, or burdened with certain taxes, would be brought back to a uniform and equitable interest. Then, too, the state, changing its debt into a perpetual annuity, would be no longer liable to payments, and could not be obliged to refund the capital, provided it paid the interest. It would find moreover an easy and advantageous mode of acquitting itself, namely, to redeem the annuity at once whenever it happened to fall below its value. Thus when an annuity of fifty livres, arising from a capital of one thousand francs, should be worth but nine hundred or eight hundred livres, the state would gain, said Cambon, one-tenth or one-fifth of the capital by redeeming it at once. This redemption was not yet organized by means of a fixed sinking-fund, but the expedient had suggested itself, and the science of public credit began to be formed.

Thus the inscription in the Great Book would simplify the form of titles, bind the existence of the debt to the existence of the republic, and change the credits into a perpetual annuity, the capital of which should not be repayable, and the interests of which should be alike for all portions of the inscriptions. This idea was simple and in part borrowed from the English, but it required great courage of execution to apply it to France, and it possessed the merit of being peculiarly seasonable at that moment. There was something forced, to be sure, in thus changing the nature of the titles and the credits, in reducing the interest to a uniform rate, and in punishing with forfeiture those creditors who would not submit to this conversion: but for a state justice is the best possible order; and this grand and energetic plan for giving uniformity to the debt was befitting a bold and complete revolution, which aimed at regulating everything by the standard of the public right.*

With this boldness Cambon's plan combined a scrupulous regard for engagements made with foreigners, who had been promised repayment at fixed periods. It provided that, as the assignats were not current out of France, the foreign creditors should be paid in specie, and at the promised periods. Moreover, the communes having contracted particular debts, exposing their creditors to great inconvenience by not paying them, the state was to take upon itself their debts, but not to seize their property till the payment of the sums for which it should have engaged. This plan was adopted entire, and it was as well executed as conceived. The capital of the debt thus reduced to uniformity was converted into a mass of annuities of two hundred millions per annum. It was deemed right, by way of compensating for the old taxes of different kinds with which it was burdened, to impose a general duty of one-fifth, which reduced the amount of interest to one hundred and sixty millions. In this manner everything was simplified and rendered perfectly clear; a great source of stockjobbing was destroyed, and confidence was restored, because a partial bankruptcy in regard to this or that kind of stock could no longer take place, and it was not to be supposed in regard to the whole debt.

From this moment it became more easy to have recourse to a loan. We shall presently see in what manner that expedient was employed to support the assignats.

The value which the Revolution disposed of in order to defray its extraordinary expenses, still consisted in national domains. This value, represented by the assignats, floated in the circulation. It was necessary to favour sales for the purpose of bringing back the assignats, and to raise their value by rendering them more rare. Victories were the best but not the readiest means of promoting sales. Various expedients had been devised to make amends for the want of them. The purchasers had, for instance, been allowed to pay in several yearly instalments. But this measure, designed to favour the peasants and to render them proprietors, was more likely to encourage sales than to bring back the assignats. In order to diminish their circulating quantity with greater certainty, it was resolved to make the compensation for offices partly in assignats and partly in acknowledgments of liquidation. The compensations amounting to less than three thousand francs were to be paid in assignats, the others in acknowledgments of liquidation, which could not be divided into smaller sums than ten thousand livres, which were not to circulate as money, were to be transferable only like any other effects to bearer, and were to be taken in payment for national domains. In this manner the portion of the national domains converted into forced money would be diminished, all that would be transformed into acknowledgments of liquidation would consist of sums not minutely divided, transferable with difficulty, fixed in the hands of the rich, withdrawn from circulation and from stockjobbing.

In order to promote still more the sale of the national domains, it was decided,