Maximillien Robespierre

“ Either the crime of monopoly is impossible, or it is real. If it’s a chimera how is it that this chimera has always been believed in? Why have we felt the ravages since the first moments of the revolution? Why do credible reports and incontestable facts denounce these guilty maneuvers to us? If it is real, by what strange privilege does it alone obtain the right to be protected? What limits would the pitiless vampires who speculate on public misery put on their attacks if bayonets and the absolute order to believe in the purity and beneficence of the monopolists were opposed to any demand? ”

“ The government sometimes subjects the very commerce of luxury items to the modifications that healthy policy calls for. Why would that which deals with the subsistence of the people be necessarily freed of this?
Doubtless if all men were just and virtuous, if cupidity was never tempted to devour the people’s substance, if the rich, docile to the voice of reason and nature, looked upon themselves as the economists of society, or as the brothers of the poor it would be possible to recognize no other law than that of the most unlimited liberty. ”

“ But how could we look upon rules of general policy, commanded by society’s interests as attacks on property? Who then is the good citizen who could complain of being obliged to act with loyalty in broad daylight? Who are the shadows necessary for if not monopolists and rascals? In any event, haven’t I proved to you that society has the right to demand that portion that is necessary for the subsistence of citizens? ”

“ I saw aristocracy accuse the people, I saw hypocritical intriguers impute their own crimes to the defenders of freedom, who they called agitators and anarchists. I saw an impudent minister whose virtue was allowed to be suspected, demand adorations of France while ruining it, from the midst of these criminal intrigues I saw tyranny emerge armed with martial law in order to legally bathe in the blood of starving citizens. Millions for the minister, from whom it was forbidden to ask for an accounting; bonuses for the profit of the blood-suckers of the people; the unlimited freedom of commerce ”

“ To speak to the representatives of the people of the means of providing for its subsistence is not only to speak to them about the most sacred of their obligations, but of the most precious of their interests, for without a doubt they are mixed in with it. It is not the cause of the indigent alone that I want to plead, but that of landowners and merchants themselves. ”

“ The first social law is thus that which guarantees to all society’s members the means of existence; all others are subordinated to it. Property was only instituted or guaranteed to cement it. It is in order to live that we have property in the first case. It is not true that property can ever be in opposition with men’s subsistence.
The aliments necessary to man are as sacred as life itself. Everything that is indispensable for its preservation is a property common to all of society. Only the surplus is private property and is abandoned to the industry of merchants. ”

“ In this system everything is against society, everything is in favor of the grain merchants.
It is here, legislators, that all your wisdom and circumspection are necessary. Such a subject is always delicate to deal with. It is dangerous to redouble the fears of the people and to even seem to authorize its discontent. It is even more dangerous to be silent about the truth and to hide principles. But if you follow them all inconveniences disappear: principles alone can dry up the sources of evil. ”

“ What more certain way to encourage cupidity and to free it from any hindrance than to pose as a principle that the law doesn’t even have the right to oversight in order to impose the slightest constraint? ”

“ I say that they don’t harm neither the interests of commerce nor the rights of property.
Let circulation throughout the entire extent of the republic be protected, but let the necessary precautions be taken so that circulation take place. It’s precisely the lack of circulation that I complain of. For the plague of the people, the sources of shortages, are the obstacles put before circulation under the pretext of rendering it unlimited. Does public subsistence circulate when greedy speculators keep it piled up in their granaries? ”

“ Whoever knows men, whoever especially knows the French people, knows that it is not in the power of a fool or a bad citizen to rise the people up without any reason against the laws they love; even less against its elected representatives and the freedom it has conquered. It is up to the representatives themselves to bear witness to the confidence given them and to disconcert aristocratic evil by taking care of the people’s needs and calming their fears. ”

“ The merchant can very well keep in his storehouse the merchandise that vanity and luxury desire up till the moment when he can sell them at the highest possible price, but no man has the right to pile up stacks of wheat while next to him his like dies of hunger.
What is the first object of society? It is to maintain the inviolable rights of man. ”

“ Circulation is that which puts products of premier necessity within the reach of all men and brings abundance and life to the hearthside. Does blood circulate when it is engorged in the brain or the breast? It circulates when it freely flows through the body. Subsistence is the blood of the people, and its free circulation is no less necessary to the health of the social body than that of blood to the life of the human body. Favor then the free circulation of grain by preventing all harmful engorgements. ”

“ But if it’s true that avarice can speculate on poverty, and tyranny itself on the despair of the people; if it’s true that all the passions declare war on suffering humanity, why would the laws not repress these abuses? ”

“ It is a fact generally recognized that the soil of France produces much beyond what is necessary to feed its inhabitants, and that the current shortages are man-made shortages. The consequence of this fact and of the principle I proposed could be troubling, but this isn’t the moment to flatter ourselves. Citizens, it is to you that the glory to make true principles triumph is reserved, and to give just laws to the world. You are not made to drag yourselves in a servile fashion in the ruts of tyrannical prejudices traced by those who came before you ”

“ I well know that when we examine the circumstances of this or that particular riot, excited by either the real or man-made shortages of wheat, the influence of a foreign cause can sometimes be recognized. Ambition and intrigue feel the need to stir up troubles. Sometimes it is the same men who excite the people in order to find the pretext to slaughter them and to render freedom itself terrible in the eyes of week and selfish men. But it is nonetheless true that the people are naturally upright and peaceful ”

“ The authors of the theory have only considered the goods necessary for life as a form of ordinary merchandise, and haven’t made any differentiation between the commerce in wheat, for example, and that of indigo; they have spoken more on the commerce in grains than on the people’s subsistence. ”

“ They profit from discontent more than cause it, and when they bring the people to ill-considered actions, using subsistence goods as the pretext, it’s only because they are predisposed to receive these impressions by oppression and poverty. A happy people has never been a turbulent people. ”

“ Such is the degree of perfection to which this theory has been taken that it has almost been established that those who corner markets are impeccable, that monopolists are humanity’s benefactors, that in the quarrels that arise between them and the people it is the people who are always wrong. ”

“ Or at least content yourselves with the advantages fortune gives you and leave the people bread, labor and morality. It is in vain that the enemies of freedom act to tear at their fatherland’s breast. They can no more stop the course of human reason than that of the sun. ”

“ The very fears of the people must be respected. How can they be calmed if you remain inactive? The very measures proposed, even if they weren’t as necessary as we think; it is enough that the people desire them, it’s enough that they prove in their eyes your attachment to their interests in order to determine you to adopt them. ”

“ Rich men, egoists: know how to prevent and prevent in advance the terrible results of the struggle of pride and cowardly passions carry out against justice and humanity. Let the example of nobles and kings teach you. ”

“ The momentary shortage that might be felt is always a bearable inconvenience, and it is enough that in general the unlimited freedom of the market works to the greater profit of and state and individuals. But the lives of men cannot be subject to the same chance. ”

“ In every country where nature furnishes man’s needs with prodigality, shortages can only be imputed to the vices of administrations or laws themselves. Bad laws and bad administration have their source in false principles and bad morals. ”

“ The bonuses can be discussed; the freedom of commerce is necessary up to the point where homicidal cupidity becomes an abuse; the use of bayonets is an atrocity. The system is essentially incomplete because it doesn’t bear upon the true principle. ”

“ If it had been the people it’s probable that the system would have received a few modifications! For example, good sense indicates this truth: that the commodities that are not essential can be abandoned to the most unlimited speculations of the merchant. ”

“ They have even less adapted it to the stormy circumstances brought about by revolutions, and if their vague theory were good in ordinary times it would find no application in the rapid measures that moments of crisis demand of us. They have counted for much the profits of merchants and landowners, and for almost nothing the lives of men. ”