an acre of his own. "We thus bind all
citizens to the country as well as to property. We restore idle and
robust arms to the soil, and lost or weakened families to the workshops
in the towns."--As to old and infirm farmers or craftsmen, also poor
mothers, wives and widows of artisans and farmers, we keep in each
department a "big ledger of national welfare;" we inscribe thereon for
every thousand inhabitants, four farmers, two mechanics, five women,
either mothers or widows; each registered person shall be pensioned
by the State, the same as a maimed soldier; labor-invalids are as
respectable as war-invalids.--Over and above those who are thus aided
on account of poverty, we relieve and elevate the entire poor class, not
alone the thirteen hundred thousand destitutes counted in France,[2169]
but, again, all who, having little or no means on hand, live from day
to day on what they can earn. We have passed a law[2170] by which the
public treasury shall, through a tax on large fortunes, "furnish to each
commune or district the necessary funds for adapting the price of bread
to the rate of wages." Our representatives in the provinces impose
on the wealthy the obligation of "lodging, feeding, and clothing all
infirm, aged, and indigent citizens and orphans of their respective
cantons."[2171] Through the decree on monopolization and the
establishment of the "maximum" we bring within reach of the poor all
objects of prime necessity. We pay them forty sous a day for attending
district meetings; and three francs a day for serving on committees of
surveillance. We recruit from amongst them our revolutionary army;[2172]
we select amongst them the innumerable custodians of sequesters: in
this way, hundreds of thousands of sans-culottes enter into the various
public services.--At last, the poor are taken out of a state of poverty:
each will now have his plot of ground, his salary or pension;

"in a well-ordered republic nobody is without some property."[2173]

Henceforth, among individuals, the difference in welfare will be small;
from the maximum to the minimum, there will be only a degree, while
there will be found in every dwelling about the same sort of household,
a plain, simple household, that of the small rural proprietor, well-off
farmer or factory foreman; that of Rousseau at Montmorency, or that
of the Savoyard Vicar, or that of Duplay, the carpenter, with whom
Robespierre lodges.[2174] There will be no more domestic serv