They break his mirrors and his furniture, leave the premises laden with booty, and go into the town and its outskirts to pillage the manufactories and break up or burn all the machinery .-- Henceforth these constitute the new leaders: for in every mob it is the boldest and least scrupulous who march ahead and set the example in destruction.

The example is contagious: the beginning was the craving for bread, the end is murder and arson; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence to the limited revolt of necessity.
V .-- Effect on the Population of the New Ideas.
Bad as it is, this savagery might, perhaps, have been overcome, in spite of the dearth and of the brigands; but what renders it irresistible is the belief of its being authorized, and that by those whose duty it is to repress it.

Here and there words and actions of a brutal frankness break forth, and reveal beyond the somber present a more threatening future--After the 9th of January, 1789, among the mob which attacks the Hotel-de-Ville and besieges the bakers' shops of Nantes, "shouts of Vive la Liberte![1126] mingled with those of Vive le Roi! are heard." A few months later, around Ploermel, the peasants refuse to pay tithes, alleging that the memorial of their seneschal's court demands their abolition.

In Alsace, after March, there is the same refusal "in many places;" many of the communities even maintain that they will pay no more taxes until their deputies to the States-General shall have fixed the precise amount of the public contributions.

In Isere it is decided, by proceedings, printed and published, that "personal dues" shall no longer be paid, while the landowners who are affected by this dare not prosecute in the tribunals.