SE on eae ee 
SCARCITY OF FOOD. 183 
title of the Father nourisher of the Parisians,—that title 
of which he showed himself always so proud, after hav- 
ing painfully gained it. 
Bailly day by day recorded in his Memoirs a state- 
ment of his actions, of his anxieties, and of his fears. It 
may be good for the instruction of the more fortunate 
administrators of the present epoch, to insert here a few 
lines from the journal of our colleague. 
“18th August. Our provisions are very much re- 
duced. Those of the morrow depend strictly on the 
arrangements made on the previous evening; and now 
amidst this distress, we learn that our flour-wagons have 
been stopped at Bourg-la-Reine ; that some banditti are 
pillaging the markets in the direction of Rouen, that they 
have seized twenty wagons of flour that were destined 
for us; ... that the unfortunate Sauvage was massacred 
at Saint Germain-en-Laye;.... that Thomassin escaped 
with difficulty from the fury of the populace at Choisy.” 
By repeating either these literal words, or something 
equivalent to them, for every day of distress throughout 
the year 1789, an exact idea may be formed of the anx- 
ieties that Bailly experienced from the morning after his 
installation as mayor. I deceive myself; to complete 
the picture we ought also to record the unreflecting and 
inconsiderate actions of a multitude of people whose des- 
tiny appeared to be, to meddle with every thing and to 
spoil every thing. I will not resist the wish to show one 
of these self-important men, starving (or very nearly so) 
the city of Paris. 
“2ist August. The store of victuals, Bailly says, 
was so scanty, that the lives of the inhabitants of Paris 
depended on the somewhat mathematical precision of our 
arrangements. Having learnt that a barge with eighteen 
