CHAP. XXVI.

JEWELLERS.

301

templated Paris only, and examined into thestate of its various manufactories, might be led toconclude, that the consumption of silver and goldin France was at least equal to that of England.But the chief, almost the exclusive, fabricationof jewellery, watches, clocks, and plate, is con-centrated in the capital. Before the revolutionthere were large establishments for the fabricationof those articles at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles ,Strasburg, and some other places. At that time,the number of workmen employed in thosebranches in Paris and in Lyons alone amountedto seventy thousand; and the portion of thegold and silver used by them was estimated byNecker, in 1789, at about ten million livresannually 1 . But most of those establishmentswere reduced to ruin by the early politicalevents of the revolution, from the want of in-ternal consumption, from the. difficulty of ex-portation to foreign countries, especially to thegreat fairs of Frankfort, Leipsic, and other partsof Germany , and from their commerce with thecolonies being almost annihilated.

When France exchanged anarchy for a militarydespotism, security was in some measure restoredto property, at least, in the capital; and theplunder of foreign countries, with the taste for

1 See Statistique Generale et Particuliere de la France et deses Colonies, par P. E. Herbin, vol. ii. p. 180.