Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

I haven't finished reading this thread and I don't want to comment until I 
have.  These last few threads have been pretty good and I don't want to rush 
through reading them.  

But the allusion to Marie Antoinette is intriguing.  As Gene pointed out 
elsewhere, she probably never said that.  But if she did, it was not due to 
being 
and out-of-touch air head as popular history paints her.



The political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in a work called 
“Confessions” that a 'great princess' had said of the masses “Qu’ils mangent 
de la 
brioche.”   It has been assumed that he meant Antoinette.  Brioche was a rich 
and expensive bread made with a lot of eggs.

Commerce was very tightly regulated in those days.  Prices were fixed by law 
and bakers were required to sell cheap baguettes to the poor.  They made 
little profit on it, but to make sure that the poor had enough to eat, if a 
baker 
ran out of baguettes, they had to sell the expensive brioche at the same 
price. 
 

When the wealthy demanded that the bakers provide their goings on with more 
and more brioche and the bakers were all to happy to neglect the poor to do 
it, 
cheap bread was in short supply and the people became restless.

So Marie Antoinette said (might have said), "If you are going to neglect the 
poor, then give them your expensive bread at a cheap price."  She was likely 
savvy and defending the poor.