country that many of the communities are satisfied that they owe nothing more to the king nor to the seigniors.  M. de Marnésia, deputy to the (National) Assembly, has arrived (here) to pass a few days at home on account of his health.  He has been treated in the rudest and most scandalous manner; it was even proposed to conduct him back to Paris under guard.  After his departure his chateau was attacked, the doors burst open and the walls of his garden pulled down. (And yet) no gentleman has done more for the people on his domain the M. le Marquis de Marnésia. . .  Excesses of every kind are on the increase; I have constant complaints of the abuse which the national militia make of their arms, and which I cannot remedy.”  According to an utterance in the National Assembly the police imagines that it is to be disbanded and has therefore no desire to make enemies for itself.  “The baillages are as timid as the police-forces; I send them business constantly, but no culprit is punished.” —­ “No nation enjoys liberty so indefinite and so disastrous to honest people; it is absolutely against the rights of man to see oneself constantly liable to have his throat cut by the scoundrels who daily confound liberty with license.” - In other words, the passions utilize the theory to justify themselves, and the theory appeal to passion to be carried out.  For example, near Liancourt, the Duc de Larochefoucauld possessed an uncultivated area of ground; “at the commencement of the revolution,[24] the poor of the town declare that, as they form a part of the nation, untilled lands being national property, this belongs to them,” and “with no other formality” they take possession of it, divide it up, plant hedges and clear it off.  “This, says Arthur Young, shows the general disposition. . . .  Pushed a little farther the consequences would not be slight for properties in this kingdom.”  Already, in the preceding year, near Rouen, the marauders, who cut down and sell the forests, declare, that “the people have the right to take whatever they require for their necessities.”  They have had the doctrine preached to them that they are sovereign, and they act as sovereigns.  The condition of their intellects being given, nothing is more natural than their conduct.  Several millions of savages are thus let loose by a few thousand windbags, the politics of the café finding an interpreter and ministrants in the mob of the streets.  On the one hand brute force is at the service of the radical dogma.  On the other hand radical dogma is at the service of brute force.  And here, in disintegrated France, these are the only two valid powers remaining erect on the debris of the others.

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Notes: 

[1] Necker, “De l’Administration des Finances,” II. 422, 435.

[2] The wages have in 1789 been estimated to be 7 sous 4 deniers of which 2 sous and 6 deniers would have to be paid for the bread.  (Mercure de France, May 7, 1791.)