Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/362

 But this rice had to be paid for at a price very disproportioned to that of bread. The burden of supplying this enormous difference was imposed on the city: but the council of ten resolved to send a remonstrance to the governor, on the impossibility of sustaining such a tax; and the governor fixed, by a decree of the 13th of December, the price of rice at twelve livres the bushel. It is also probable, though nowhere expressly stated, that the maximum price for other sorts of grain was fixed by other proclamations. Whilst, by these various measures, bread and flour were kept at a low price in Milan, it consequently happened that crowds of people rushed into the city to supply their wants. Don Gonzalo, to remedy this inconvenience, forbade, by another decree of the 15th of December, the carrying out of the city bread to the value of more than twenty pence; the penalty was a fine of "twenty-five crowns, and in case of inability, a public flogging, and greater punishments still, at the discretion of his excellency."

The populace wished to procure abundance by pillage and conflagration, the legal power wished to maintain it by the galleys and the rope. Every method was resorted to to accomplish their purpose, but the reader will soon learn the total failure of them all. It is, besides, easy to see, and not useless to observe, that these strange means had an intimate and necessary connection with each other; each was the inevitable consequence of the preceding, and all, in fact, flowed from the first error, that of fixing upon bread a price so disproportioned to that which ought to have resulted from the real state of things. Such an expedient, however, has always appeared to the populace not only conformable to equity, but very simple and easy of execution; it is then very natural that in the agonies and misery which are the necessary effects of scarcity, they should, if it be in their power, adopt it. But as the consequences begin to be felt, the government is obliged to repair the evil by new laws, forbidding men to do that which previous laws had recently prescribed to them.

The principal fruits of the insurrection were these; the destruction or loss of much provision in the insurrection itself, and the rapid consumption of the small quantity of