86 Ethel Lee Howie 



provinces. On the very day when the national assembly was 

 established, it was declared that a committee should be named to 

 " examine the causes producing famine in the provinces and to 

 seek the best and promptest means of remedying it." It was also 

 decreed that the king be asked to submit to this committee all the 

 information it needed.*^^ On June 19 it was decreed that the com- 

 mittee on subsistence should "concern itself without relaxation 

 with the dearth and to seek means to remedy its evil effect." This 

 original committee was composed of thirty-two members of the 

 commons/'-*' but it was increased by ten of tthe clergy on June 

 25*^" and sixteen of the nobility on June 26.*-® 



On July 4, Du Pont, acting for the committee, reported to the as- 

 sembly. Three of the committee, he stated, had been appointed to 

 ask the controller-general for information on the subject of food 

 supply so that the committee would be in a better position to know 

 what steps should be taken. Necker had given them a statement of 

 the imports and exports and had prepared a memoire which Du 

 Pont presented to the assembly.*^^ In this memoire, Necker stated 

 that 1421,400 hundred weight of wheat, costing the king more than 

 25,000,000 livres, had been purchased, but that this had failed to 

 supply the capital and indemnify the bakers. He also added that 

 if it were necessary to eat rye bread, after the harvest of rye, in 

 order to make the wheat last longer, that every one, even the king, 

 would have rye bread only. He opposed the popular belief that 

 the scarcity of grain was due to the greed of a few who had grain 



*^^ Proccs-verbal, I, No. i, 13. 



426 Proces-verbal, No. 2, 3. 



427 Ibid., No. 7, 18. 

 42S Ibid., No. 8, 26. 



'^-^Proces-verbal, I, No. 15, 5; Point du jour, I, 108; Assemblee na- 

 tionale, I, 353 ; Courrier de Provence, I, 17th letter, i ; Bulletins de I'assem- 

 blee nationale, July 4; Gazette de Leyde, Sup. No. 56, letters of July 5 

 and July 9; Biauzat, Sa vie et sa correspondance (II, 160), speaks of M. 

 Du Pont giving the report, but gives no details. The Bulletins dc I'assem- 

 blee nationale state that, " hier 17 boulangers de Paris etaient venus se 

 plaindre au comite des subsistances qu'il y avait des farines, qu'on leur 

 en fournissait peu, et qu'elles etaient de mauvaise qualite. II est probable 

 que c'est ce qui a determine le rapport." 



368 



