purchase provisions, that the capital might be maintained in
dependence and good humour. The provisions obtained by these means
were distributed to the shopkeepers, who had instructions to retail
them to the idle and disorderly, at about a twentieth part of the
original cost, and no one could profit by this regulation, without
first receiving a ticket from the Committee of his section.

It was lately asserted in the Convention, and not disavowed, that if
the government persisted in this sort of traffic, the annual loss
attending the article of corn alone would amount to fifty millions
sterling. The reduction of the sum in question into English money
is made on a presumption that the French government did not mean
(were it to be avoided) to commit an act of bankruptcy, and redeem
their paper at less than par. Reckoning, however, at the real value
of assignats when the calculation was made, and they were then worth
perhaps a fifth of their nominal value, the government was actually
at the expence of ten millions sterling a year, for supplying Paris
with a very scanty portion of bread! The sum must appear enormous,
but the peculation under such a government must be incalculable; and
when it is recollected that all neutral ships bringing cargoes for
the republic must have been insured at an immense premium, or
perhaps eventually purchased by the French, and that very few could
reach their destination, we may conclude that such as did arrive
cost an immoderate sum.

--"The insurrection that immediately succeeded was at first the effect of
a similar scheme, and it ended in a party contention, in which the
people, as usual, were neuter.

"The examination into the conduct of Barrere, Collot, &c. had been