of the grain maximum in Revolutionary France. This statement simply re-echoes the invectives hurled at the farmer from 1792 on by those members of the Convention or of town councils who represented the point of view of the urban proletariat, and who could not or would not understand the position of the farmer. Mobs of townsmen had ruined the grain-trade and had created an artificial famine even before the general war broke out in February, 1793. Tormented by fear of scarcity, the townsmen not only prevented grain from being sent out of their own communities to other markets, but also stopped wagons which were passing by, and either pillaged the loads or compelled the grain to be sold, often below cost. They looked upon the grain-merchants as in a conspiracy to corner the market or to export grain, and they began to regard the farmer as a conspirator too, and to abuse him when he appeared in the local market. Their anger was aroused if he refused to take the rapidly depreciating paper for his grain. As the assignats had lost nearly half their face-value by the summer of 1792, it is not surprising that the farmer preferred coin, and, if he could not get this, demanded a higher price. The first maximum law, adopted May 4, 1793, provided that in each department the price should be the average of the local market prices from January to May. The farmer could not now make a distinction between payment in assignats and payment in coin, for that had just been made a penal offense. In consequence he was inclined to keep his grain, waiting for the Convention to repeal the maximum law, or for a turn in the political wheel of fortune which should bring coin again into circulation. The evidence of the documents is that wherever the law was enforced the markets were deserted, if they had not been deserted before. Several departments, fearing the consequences to themselves of the law, did not enforce it at all or fixed the price later than their neighbors, in the hope of attracting grain to their own markets. By the close of August it was recognized that this first experiment was a failure, and on September II the plan was tried of fixing a uniform price for the whole country and making an allowance for the costs of transportation. This law offered still less inducement to the farmer, for in those departments where grain was scarce he was to receive a price much lower even than the January price. If he took his grain to market, he commonly found no merchants to buy it, the allowance for carriage being below the rates charged by carters and boatmen. Moreover, why should a merchant buy at the maximum in one place and transport it to another when he was obliged to sell at the same price? The reason for the

partial failure of the grain maximum is to be found elsewhere than in the greed of the farmers. Many members of the Convention rightly believed that all such efforts were doomed to failure unless the inflation of paper money was stopped.

It is by no means clear that the grain maximum was a complete failure, except from the point of view of the orthodox economy. France was in a condition for which the Convention was not wholly responsible. The distrust which each department, often each district or town, felt toward its neighbors when the question of food was raised, had brought about an economic federalism far more dangerous than the mild schemes of decentralization entertained by the Girondins. The Constituent Assembly had embarked on the disastrous policy of relying on paper money rather than upon taxes to pay the expenses of the Revolution. By the spring and summer of 1793 the ills bred by these two diseases had become inveterate. They were aggravated by defeats on the frontier, by rumors of treason, and by the fact of civil war. Grain must be obtained for the armies and for the civil population as well. It was folly to expect the farmer to save the situation, voluntarily, at his own cost, for until the general maximum was introduced in the fall he had to pay high prices for everything he bought and high wages to his employees. But both the law of May and the law of September did contain a provision which could be utilized to keep the country from starvation. This was the right of the authorities to compel farmers to bring grain to market, where, of course, it could be purchased at the maximum price. Whether the proceeding was just is not now under discussion. The local records show that commandeering, or the requisition, as it was then called, was the method by which France was fed, so far as grain was concerned, in the last half of 1793 and during the year 1794. At best the system of force could. be only temporary. Not even Terror could in the long run keep the farmers at work. But by the time it was necessary to abandon the plan of a maximum the country had been saved both from its foreign foes and from the factions which were still more dangerous. There is some truth in the remark made in his memoirs by another Levasseur, deputy from the Sarthe, that "our critics must prove that the maximum has not lessened the wretchedness of the masses, and so stimulated their enthusiasm, before blaming us for establishing it."

Perhaps the same might be said for the general maximum, and doubtless Levasseur's remark was meant to include this, but the case would be difficult to make out. In the first place the law had

been in existence only a month when the basis of prices was fundamentally changed. The principle of the law of September 29 was that prices should be the local prices of 1790 with one-third added. The Convention soon discovered that neither wholesaler nor retailer could continue business under this system. The wholesaler was apparently better off than the retailer, because he could charge the maximum to the retailer, who then could make no profit at all. But the wholesaler was hit almost equally hard, if he tried to restock, because the producer charged the maximum and the law made no allowance for the great increase in transportation charges. On the 11th Brumaire (November 1), accordingly, the Convention decided that prices should be based upon those of 1790 at the place of production, with the addition of a third, plus a rate per league for carriage, and five per cent. for the wholesaler, and ten per cent. for the retailer. A few days before a new Commission of Supplies (Subsistances et Approvisionnements) had been created, and to this was assigned the task of preparing the schedules of prices at the place of production in 1790. The schedules were to be printed and sent to the district authorities, whose duty it was to add the allowances for transportation and for profits. The Commission seems to have labored with the greatest diligence, but its task was not completed until late in February. After the Convention had approved the work the printing of the schedules began. As there were twenty, amounting in all to 1278 printed pages, weeks were required. They had to be printed again in the districts, with the legal allowances added, in order that citizens as well as merchants might have copies. In not a few districts the local printers did not have type enough to push forward the work rapidly. The consequence was that the new rates were promulgated locally one after another all through the spring and summer. As all maximum laws were abrogated in December, the new price system had a short career. One question upon which available documents do not throw sufficient light is whether the law of the 11th Brumaire operated to nullify the law of September 29. M. Lefebvre finds that it did in the commune of Bourbourg, but he does not express so definite an opinion for the district of Bergues as a whole. The documents do offer an abundance of evidence to show that in many places the earlier maximum was disregarded for other reasons, if not because of the change in the scheme.

One of the most curious results of the maximum legislation was the growth of a contraband trade, which reached enormous proportions. This was especially true for butter, eggs, and meat, which

were peddled in small quantities by revendeurs or higglers. To control the prices charged by such persons, chiefly women, who made their way into alleys, to the doors of apartments, and to the service entrances of the rich, was practically impossible. The growth of this contraband trade contributed to the unpopularity of a law which was ruinous only to honest butchers and grocers.

In the study of the maximum legislation the close connection between the influence of the Paris radicals and the two laws of September II and of September 29 has not been sufficiently emphasized. When late in August it became clear that the first grain. maximum was a failure, the tide of sentiment in the Convention. seemed to be running against the policy of a maximum. Paris then intervened with demands and menaces. On September 4 the municipal council voted to proceed to the Convention in a body and demand the immediate creation of a "revolutionary army, which should march wherever necessary to thwart the manoeuvres of egoists and forestallers [i. e., grain merchants and farmers], and bring them to justice". Chaumette, speaking for the commune the next day, urged that a guillotine accompany the army, in order that at a blow the lives of intriguers, as well as their plots, should be cut off. This, he said, would force "avarice and cupidity to disgorge the riches of the earth". The agitation to strengthen the food laws and to carry them out rigorously enabled Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois to force their way into the Committee of Public Safety. The existing members of the committee, if we may judge by the later speeches of Saint Just and Barère, took a critical attitude toward the maximum laws. In the spring of 1794 Barère, speaking in behalf of the committee for the adoption of the new schedules of prices, declared frankly that the original maximum laws were a feature of the "profound system of the counter-revolutionary cabinet of London and Paris". Not many days afterward the committee ordered the arrest of Chaumette, the spokesman of the Paris radicals in the food agitation of September.

These are only a few of the interesting problems the study of which is facilitated by the publications of the Commission. It is to be hoped that the burdens which the war has laid upon France will not fatally hamper the work undertaken by the Commission and its co-operating scholars.

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XXIII.-8.

HENRY E. BOURNE.

DOCUMENTS

1. The New England Emigrant Aid Company and English Cotton Supply Associations: Letters of Frederick L. Olmsted, 1857

THE following letters reveal an attempt made in 1857 by the New England Emigrant Aid Company to enlist the aid of English cotton manufacturers in colonizing free laborers upon new land in the southwest of the United States. The work of this society in assisting the establishment of free communities in Kansas is well known. In encouraging emigrants, furnishing them with advice and helping to defray their travelling expenses, and finally by supplying the new communities with the necessary outfit of capital in the form of sawmills, grist-mills, etc., the Emigrant Aid Company combated the further advance of slavery with an intelligent policy of practical opportunism. Its business-like methods and adherence to lawful means still stand out in marked contrast to the violent denunciations and revolutionary propaganda which characterized much of the anti-slavery movement.

To have enlisted the services of Frederick Law Olmsted is the best sort of proof that the leaders of the Emigrant Aid Company were really anxious to learn the truth about slavery, for by the publication of his Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in 1856 and the Journey through Texas in 1857 Mr. Olmsted had shown himself to be the best-informed and the most unprejudiced and thoughtful student of slave society in this country.

The plan which Mr. Olmsted submitted to the Cotton Supply Associations of Manchester and Liverpool was based upon two clear and important convictions: (1) that cotton could be successfully grown almost anywhere in the South by white labor, and (2) that free white labor could in the long run hold its ground against the slave-using planters in competition for the land. The success of

1 The first point was elaborated in Olmsted's Journey in the Back Country, PP. 337-355. The soundness of the contention has been amply demonstrated by the later history of Southern agriculture, especially in Texas.

On the second point there was ground for a difference of opinion. Would the new colonists be any more able to hold their land against the competition of the large planters using slave gangs than were the small farmers of the South Atlantic states who in earlier decades had been driven on to poorer soils and to the new Southwest? Much would undoubtedly have depended on the character