As to their mode of operations, it consists in "selling justice, in trading on denunciations, in holding under sequestration at least four thousand households," in putting seals everywhere on dwellings and warehouses, in not summoning interested parties who might watch their proceedings, in expelling women, children and servants who might testify to their robberies, in not drawing up inventories, in installing themselves as "guardians at five francs a day," themselves or their boon companions, and in "general squandering, in league with the administrators." It is impossible to stay their hands or repress them, even for the representatives.

Take them in the act,[33131] and you must shut your eyes or they will all shout at the oppression of patriots; they do this systematically so that nobody may be followed up.
We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without our consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a storehouse under sequestration,....

forced the locks and pillaged, under our own eyes, the very house we occupy.

And who are these devastators?
Two commissioners of the Committee who emptied the storehouse without our warrant, and even without having any power from the Committee."-- It is a sack in due form, and day after day; it began on the 10th of October, 1793; it continued after, without interruption, and we have just seen that, on Floreal 28, year II., that is to say, April 26, 1794, after one hundred and twenty-three days, it is still maintained.
The last mad scramble and the most extensive of all .-- In spite of the subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely, and although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal; and first, to articles of furniture which could not be easily abstracted, to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of the palaces, chateaux and churches; next, and above all, to real estate, fixtures and buildings.

To meet its expenses it put all that up for sale, and whoever wants anything has only to come forward as a buyer, the last bidder becoming the legal owner and at a cheap rate.