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Rh had been levied in the different districts of Paris, a reorganization also took place in the municipalities of the capital. Each district elected two members, so that the Town Council consisted of 120 members, who took possession of the Hotel de Ville, under the name of Representatives of the Commune of Paris. This Commune, destined to play so leading a part in the future of the Revolution, gradually increasing in number, came to be called "The Council of the Three Hundred."

Although the reform of abuses went on steadily enough, it was impossible to eradicate in a few months the rooted evils of centuries. While the new Constitution was being elaborated, the country, badly-farmed as it was, did not grow more productive than of yore, corn was as scarce, bread remained dear, and trade was naturally more than ever depressed. Madame Roland remarks in her Memoirs how at Lyons twenty thousand artisans had been in want of bread during the first winter of the Revolution. In Paris, to which the needy, the outcast, and the miserable gravitated as to a common abyss, the muffled moan of the homeless and hungry accompanied the deliberations of the legislators.

Side by side with the noble efforts of brave and earnest men, were also at work appetites and passions whose sinister power hurried on the men who appeared to be guiding the State vessel. And could it be otherwise, considering the previous national conditions? Could these men and women who had so long borne the bitterest yoke, who had been accustomed to the spectacle of the most ferocious punishments, when suddenly untrammelled, act with perfect clemency, moderation, or humanity? Had they, indeed, done so, it