--Unfortunately, however, before the repast of sausages
could be prepared, a hue and cry reached the place, that this
gracious Representant was an impostor! He was bereft of his
dignities, conveyed to prison, and afterwards tried by the Tribunal
Revolutionnaire at Paris; but his Counsel, by insisting on the
mildness with which he had "borne his faculties," contrived to get
his punishment mitigated to a short imprisonment.--Another suffered
death on a somewhat similar account; or, as the sentence expressed
it, for degrading the character of a National Representative.--Just
Heaven! for degrading the character of a National Representative!!!
--and this too after the return of Carrier from Nantes, and the
publication of Collot d'Herbois' massacres at Lyons!
**The agents employed by government in the purchase of subsistence
amounted, by official confession, to ten thousand. In all parts
they were to be seen, rivalling each other, and creating scarcity
and famine, by requisitions and exactions, which they did not
convert to the profit of the republic, but to their own.--These
privileged locusts, besides what they seized upon, occasioned a
total stagnation of commerce, by laying embargoes on what they did
not want; so that it frequently occurred that an unfortunate
tradesman might have half the articles in his shop under requisition
for a month together, and sometimes under different requisitions
from deputies, commissaries of war, and agents of subsistence, all
at once; nor could any thing be disposed of till such claims were
satisfied or relinquished.
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