14 Charles Kuhlmann 



market price."^ This was looked upon as a bribe and was so 

 denounced at the Jacobins. Its too evident intention was to buy 

 the support of the poorer classes who, under ordinary circum- 

 stances, would have been very susceptible to this sort of appeal. 

 The mere undertaking proves that the radicals were not alone in 

 comprehending the political importance of this class, "the two 

 hundred thousand beggars of Paris," as Michelet puts it. Had 

 the Monarchical society handled this afifair with a little more skill, 

 they might have become dangerous rivals to Robespierre and his 

 partisans, but they made a fatal mistake at the very beginning by 

 seeking to distribute their bread-tickets through the medium of 

 the sectional assemblies where the middle-class Jacobins still con- 

 trolled. Now while this faction of the Lameths through their 

 influence in the Jacobin committee on correspondence would not 

 affiliate associations of the lower class, they were still less inclined 

 to permit them to be made the backbone of resistance on the part 

 of their avowed enemies.-^ They therefore made a direct appeal 

 to the sections for the suppression of the new society, so that 

 from the Jacobins the denunciation went to the municipality 

 through the sections which gave it a sort of legal form. The 

 municipality was weak enough to yield and ordered the Monar- 

 chical society to suspend its sessions. The society complied under 

 protest, after it had experienced a siege of the mob which suc- 

 ceeded in breaking up one of its meetings. Under repeated de- 

 mands for a hearing of its case, the order of the municipality was 

 finally revoked,-^ but the society had already perceived that neither 



^ Our best and most complete information regarding this society is 

 found in the Journal de la Societe des amis de la constitution monarchique, 

 edited by M. de Fontanes (Bib. nat. LC2/491). This is the official journal 

 of the society. Sigismond Lacroix, in vols. I and II, has collected most 

 of the evidence to be had with reference to the society. 



^ A very instructive article concerning these popular societies and their 

 relation to the Jacobins is reprinted by Aulard from the Patriate frangais 

 of Brissot. It is in the shape of a letter from Lanthenas. Sociite des 

 Jacobins, II, 147-51. 



* The obscurity hitherto surrounding this subject has been thoroughly 

 cleared up by Lacroix in Actes de la commune de Paris, second series, 

 vols. I and II. See the Sclaircissements for December, 1790, and Janu- 

 ary, February and March, 1791. 



