The other description--_the oppressed_--are people of some property:
they are the small relics of the persecuted landed interest; they are
the burghers and the farmers. By the very circumstance of their being of
some property, though numerous in some points of view, they cannot be
very considerable as _a number_. In cities the nature of their
occupations renders them domestic and feeble; in the country it
confines them to their farm for subsistence. The national guards are all
changed and reformed. Everything suspicious in the description of which
they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called of
vigilance and safety, are everywhere formed: a most severe and
scrutinizing inquisition, far more rigid than anything ever known or
imagined. Two persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to their
liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers scarcely credible have been
executed, and their property confiscated. At Paris, and in most other
towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole,--which they cannot obtain
without a daily ticket delivered to them by their masters.
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