description. The panic which prevails in all communities, and which
is stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine
even in the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously expensive,
and there is a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormous
outlays to which they are exposed: The payment of the deputies to
the seneschal's court, the establishment of the burgess guards,
guardhouses for this militia, and the purchase of arms, uniforms,
and outlays in forming communes and permanent councils. To this
must be add the cost of the printing of all kinds, and the
publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss of time due
to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and the utter
stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes combined
"have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."-

In the Center, and in the North, where the crops are good,
provisions are not less scarce, because wheat is not put in
circulation, and is kept concealed.

"For five months," writes the municipal assembly of Louviers,[10]
"not a farmer has made his appearance in the markets of this town.
Such a circumstance was never known before, although, from time to
time, high prices have prevailed to a considerable extent. On the
contrary, the markets were always well supplied in proportion to the
high price of grain."

In vain the municipality orders the surrounding forty-seven
parishes to provide them with wheat. They pay no attention to the
mandate; each for himself and each for his own house; the intendant
is no longer present to compel local interests to give way to public
interests.