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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 oflfense. 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 11 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