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
