Spectacle.--National Guards called out.--Disperse the Mob.--Attack on
Herrick's Flour Store.--Folly of the Riot.

Hunger will drive any people mad, and once let there be real suffering for
want of food among the lower classes, while grain is piled up in the
storehouses of the rich, and riots will surely follow. In the French
Revolution of 1789, there was a great scarcity of provisions, which caused
frightful outbreaks. It will never do to treat with scorn the cry of
millions for bread. When, amid the general suffering in Paris, one said to
Foulon, the minister of state, the people are starving for bread, he
replied, "Let them eat hay." The next day he was hung to a lamp-post. The
tumultuous multitude marching on Versailles, shouting wildly for "bread,"
was a fearful spectacle. One can hardly blame starving men from seizing
food by violence, if it can be got in no other way; and if ever a mob
could be justifiable, it would be when they see their families suffering
and perishing around them, in the very sight of well-stored granaries.

In the old despotisms of Europe, the poor and oppressed attribute all
their want and suffering to the rich and powerful, so that they are not
held back from redressing their wrongs by ignorance of their source, but
fear of the strong hand of their rulers.

These men, embittered not only by their own sufferings, but by the
traditions of the past, when they come to this country are easily roused
to commit acts of violence by anything that reminds them of their old
oppressions. They have tasted the wormwood and the gall, and refuse to
have it pressed to their lips in a country where liberty is the birthright
of all. This is what has made, and still makes, the foreign population
among us so dangerous. The vast proportion of them are from this very
class. Ignorant of everything but their wrongs, they rise in angry