sions; and in the end, by a free and entire competition in the trade, to keep up between different nations that communication of exchanging superfluities for necessaries, so conformable to the order established by Divine Providence, and to views of humanity, which ought to animate all sovereigns."

The speech of M. de Carodeuc de la Chalotais, when he presented this Edict for registration to the Parliament of Brittany, may be found in the Supplement to the [C. Smith's] Three Corn Tracts, [1766.] It is valuable as it exhibits a view of the state of the corn-trade in France for more than a century preceding.

The revocation of these Edicts under the administration of the Abbé Terray, and the subsequent measures of Turgot, were stated in my last lecture with sufficient minuteness for my present purpose.

Of the origin and progress of this literary and political controversy in France, a circumstantial account may be found in various writers. The following rapid sketch is a faint translation from the light and inimitable pen of Voltaire. I quote it less on account of the information it conveys, than of the happy touches with which the author characterizes the enthusiasm and levity of his frivolous countrymen.

"About the year 1750, the French nation surfeited with verses, with tragedies, with comedies, with operas, with romances, with romantic histories, with moral reflections more romantic still, and with disputes on the mysteries of theology, betook itself to discussions on the subject of grain. The vineyards were forgotten, and nothing was talked of but wheat and rye. Volumes on volumes were written about agriculture, which everybody read excepting the husbandman. It happened to strike some one in his way home from the Opéra Comique, that France had immense quantities of grain to dispose of; the nation became clamorous, and obtained from the Government, in 1764, the freedom of exportation. The consequence was the same as in the reign of Henry IV. The

* [I have not been successful in finding the speech in the place designated.

The edition which I have examined is dated London, 1766.]

exportation was carried a little too far, and a year of scarcity followed. The discontented ran from one extreme to the other, and declaimed against the exportation which they had solicited. Some men of genius and of the most disinterested benevolence wrote with equal sagacity and courage in favour of an unlimited freedom in this branch of commerce. Others not inferior in genius, and with motives not less pure, contended that this freedom should be subjected to regulations. Of this number was the Abbé Galiani of Naples, who discovered the secret of composing (and in the French language) dialogues as amusing as our best romances, and as instructive as our most serious performances. If this work did not lower the price of bread, it gratified the public in a way not less acceptable, by adding to the stock of its entertainment. The advocates for an unlimited exportation replied formally. The result was, that their readers knew no longer what to make of the controversy: The greater part began a course of novel reading, in hopes that three or four years of plenty might enable them to form a judgment. The ladies relapsed into their former ignorance of the distinction between rye and wheat; and the curates returned to their old belief, that the seed must die and rot before it quickens."*

The same prejudices with respect to the corn-trade, which were employed so unjustly but so successfully as an engine of popular opposition to the administration of Turgot, appear to have existed in full force in many parts of France at the period when the late Revolution commenced. Of this a judgment may be formed from the Cahiers, or papers of instructions given by the different electoral bodies to their representatives. By one of these (the Tiers-état de Meudon) it is demanded, that as France is exposed to the rigours of famine, every farmer shall be obliged to register his crop of every kind, and also every month the quantity sold." Another requires, "That the severest laws be passed against monopolizers, whose agency at present desolates the kingdom." Fifteen demand the

* [The original will be found in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, Art. Blé, Sect. iii.]

erection of public magazines; and even the author of the Cahier presented by the Tiers-état de Paris, demand "that the transport of corn from province to province should be prohibited." Nor will the inveteracy of these prejudices in France appear so wonderful, when we consider that in that country the people live almost entirely on bread; that in consequence of the small farms which are everywhere prevalent, the quantity of corn in the markets is always, in Autumn, beyond the proportion reserved for supplying the rest of the year; and that the number of real speculators or accapareurs, is by far too inconsiderable to remedy this evil. From these causes the supply must necessarily be irregular and frequently insufficient; an insufficiency, however, wonderfully increased by that popular violence which has been so often encouraged and sanctioned. by blunders of Government and by arrêts of Parliament.

Of this prejudice, deeply rooted in the minds of the French population, a very dexterous and but too successful advantage was taken by those anarchists who availed themselves of the revolutionary crisis as a fit occasion for wresting the government from the hands of their lawful masters: and it was by means of that violence so naturally inspired by such prejudices, that the lower orders were first stimulated to those sanguinary atrocities which have left so indelible a stain on the national character. A more striking example is not furnished in the whole range of history, of the expediency of correcting, in times of established tranquillity, whatever errors and misapprehensions on the part of the people seem most likely to furnish arms to ambitious and unprincipled demagogues, with which they may, in times of distraction and disorder, assail the authority of wisdom and virtue. They demonstrate the truth of the maxim of a French writer, speaking of religious enthusiasm―a maxim which may be extended with equal justice to all the duties of a government:-" Seize the moment when the tide is at the lowest ebb to repair and strengthen your dikes."

With these views it may be proper to prosecute a little farther this account of the fluctuations of the French policy, in Young's France, p. 482.

regard to the commerce of grain. In doing so, I shall be unavoidably led to anticipate some observations connected with another branch of our subject. But this apparent defect in arrangement, is the necessary consequence of the connexion. which subsists between the different branches of the corntrade.

In the months of May and June 1789, after a harvest, which though not great, is allowed to have been but little under the common average, so extraordinary a dearness prevailed, that M. Necker thought it expedient to order immense cargoes of wheat, and every other sort of corn, to be bought up all over Europe. In a paper published by himself, entitled Mémoire Instructif, he states, that he has ordered to be bought 1,404,463 quintals of different sorts of grain, of which more than 800,000 were arrived. The expense of this importation amounted to 45,543,697 livres, (about £2,000,000 ;) and to such a length were plans of economy carried among the higher orders, that we are assured the king allowed only bread of wheat and rye mixed to be served at his own table.

It does not belong to our present subject to offer any opinion concerning the primary causes of this pretended scarcity. That it originated with the minister I am very far from supposing or believing, but that he contributed, by his indiscretion, greatly to aggravate the evil, while he was disinterestedly risking his own fortune in an attempt to counteract it, appears to be unquestionable. The following sentence in his Mémoire Instructif admits of no apology, and is perfectly in the style of the addresses made, of late, by the English judges to the grand juries.

"Monopolizing is the first cause to which the multitude. naturally ascribes the high price of grain; and, in fact, there is often but too much reason to complain of the mischiefs occasioned in this way by the avarice of mercantile speculators."1 The consequences were such as might have been expected,

a blind rage against Monopolizers, accompanied with various outrages and atrocities. In June and July the markets were not opened till troops arrived to protect the farmers from having their corn seized; and the magistrates, to prevent insurrections among the people, had recourse to the pernicious measure of regulating prices. The farmers, in consequence, refrained from going to market, in order to sell their wheat at home at the best price they could get, (which was, of course, much higher than the assize of the markets;) and an evil which, if left to itself, must, at the worst, have terminated in the inconveniences connected with a short or deficient crop, began to assume the awful appearance of an inevitable famine.

In the proceedings of Government on this occasion, nothing seems to have been more reprehensible than an imprudent disclosure of its own apprehensions and alarms. We are told by Mr. Arthur Young, who was engaged in an agricultural survey of France at this period, that the publication of M. Necker's Mémoire Instructif, (in which he announced the steps he had taken for the importation of a suitable supply,)" instead of sinking the price, raised it directly and enormously: upon one market day at Nangis, from thirty-eight livres to forty-three livres the septier of two hundred and forty pounds, and upon the following one (July 1st) to forty-nine livres. On the next day, at Columiers, it was taxed by the police at four livres five sous, and four livres six sous the twenty-five pounds; but as the farmers would not bring it to market at that price, they sold it at their farms at five and a half livres and even six livres; that is, at the rate of fifty-seven livres the septier. At Nangis it advanced, in fourteen days, eleven livres a septier; and at Columiers a great deal more." Of these facts Mr. Young was an eye-witness; and as they took place in the vicinity of the capital, for which the great foreign provision was chiefly destined, they prove, in the most unequivocal manner, the mischiefs produced by the agitation thus excited in the public mind. A measure which cost the nation forty millions of livres, had the effect, in the two markets which Mr. Young * [Travels in France, p. 477.]