fearfully depressed. To detect goods concealed by farmers and
shopkeepers, a spy system was established with a reward to the
informer of one-third of the value of the goods discovered. To spread
terror, the Criminal Tribunal at Strassburg was ordered to destroy the
dwelling of any one found guilty of selling goods above the price set
by law. The farmer often found that he could not raise his products
at anything like the price required by the new law, and when he tried
to hold back his crops or cattle, alleging that he could not afford to
sell them at the prices fixed by law, they were frequently taken from
him by force and he was fortunate if paid even in the depreciated fiat
money--fortunate, indeed, if he finally escaped with his life.[51]

Involved in all these perplexities, the Convention tried to cut the
Gordian knot. It decreed that any person selling gold or silver coin,
or making any difference in any transaction between paper and specie,
should be imprisoned in irons for six years:--that any one who refused
to accept a payment in _assignats_, or accepted _assignats_ at a
discount, should pay a fine of three thousand _francs_; and that any
one committing this crime a second time should pay a fine of six
thousand _francs_ and suffer imprisonment twenty years in irons.
Later, on the 8th of September, 1793, the penalty for such offences
was made death, with confiscation of the criminal's property, and so
reward was offered to any person informing the authorities regarding
any such criminal transaction. To reach the climax of ferocity, the
Convention decreed, in May, 1794, that the death penalty should be
inflicted on any person convicted of "having asked, be- fore a bargain
was concluded, in what money payment was to be made." Nor was this
all. The great finance minister, Cambon, soon saw that the worst
enemies of his policy were gold and silver. Therefore it was that,
under his lead, the Convention closed the Exchange and finally, on