How shall I explain to an Englishman the doctrine of universal requisition?  I rejoice that you can imagine nothing like it.—­After establishing, as a general principle, that the whole country is at the disposal of government, succeeding decrees have made specific claims on almost every body, and every thing.  The tailors, shoemakers,* bakers, smiths, sadlers, and many other trades, are all in requisition—­carts, horses, and carriages of every kind, are in requisition—­the stables and cellars are put in requisition for the extraction of saltpetre, and the houses to lodge soldiers, or to be converted into prisons.

* In order to prevent frauds, the shoemakers were obliged to make only square-toed shoes, and every person not in the army was forbidden to wear them of this form.  Indeed, people of any pretentions to patriotism (that is to say, who were much afraid) did not venture to wear any thing but wooden shoes; as it had been declared anti-civique, if not suspicious, to walk in leather.

—­Sometimes shopkeepers are forbidden to sell their cloth, nails, wine, bread, meat, &c.  There are instances where whole towns have been kept without the necessaries of life for several days together, in consequence of these interdictions; and I have known it proclaimed by beat of drum, that whoever possessed two uniforms, two hats, or two pair of shoes, should relinquish one for the use of the army!  Yet with all these efforts of despotism, the republican troops are in many respects ill supplied, the produce being too often converted to the use of the agents of government, who are all Jacobins, and whose peculations are suffered with impunity, because they are too necessary, or perhaps too formidable for punishment.

These proceedings, which are not the less mischievous for being absurd, must end in a total destruction of commerce:  the merchant will not import what he may be obliged to sell exclusively to government at an arbitrary and inadequate valuation.—­Those who are not imprisoned, and have it in their power, are for the most part retired from business, or at least avoid all foreign speculations; so that France may in a few months depend only on her internal resources.  The same measures which ruin one class, serve as a pretext to oppress and levy contributions on the rest.—­In order to make this right of seizure still more productive, almost every village has its spies, and the domiciliary visits are become so frequent, that a man is less secure in his own house, than in a desert amidst Arabs.  On these occasions, a band of Jacobins, with a municipal officer at their head, enter sans ceremonie, over-run your apartments, and if they find a few pounds of sugar, soap, or any other article which they choose to judge more than sufficient for immediate consumption, they take possession of the whole as a monopoly, which they claim for the use of the republic, and the terrified owner, far from expostulating, thinks himself happy if he escapes