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and at inconsiderable prices; and to the privileges given to the inhabitants of the communes, not proprietors of lands, of depasturing cattle, after the crops are taken, upon the severals and upon the wastes and commonable lands. On these small portions the proprietors and their families work and subsist; and in consequence of this right of depasturing, the necessity of continued and regular labour is in some degree superseded.

The Encyclopædia* had ridiculed, as superstitious, the respect in which the establishments, built on Christian principles, for the relief of suffering humanity, had been hitherto held; they were condemned as narrow in their views, and founded on principles too confined for the great and extended views of philanthropy, with which the golden age of the French Revolution was to bless mankind. The National Convention, therefore, expressly recognizing the right of the poor to relief, determined on concentrating and generalizing all institutions of this nature, by raising a fund for this purpose from the nation at large, and selling all the property attached to the hospitals and establishments of this kind. This last measure was the only one adopted; and further, by the imposition of oaths which their conscience would not permit them to take, they lost the services of that most excellent order of men,

*Dupin, Histoire de l'Administration de Secours Public.

the curés, or parish-priests; and of those amiable and exemplary females, the Sœurs de Charité, whom a spirit of religion had devoted to the labours of active charity.

But the error was soon discovered; and in less, than a year after the decree for the sale, it was repealed, when three-fifths of the property had been sold. But during this interval the poor languished and died, in poverty and distress; and in the defect of the means of the relief of one branch of indigence, the loss of human life would be almost incredible, if the fact was not ascertained by unquestionable documents. In the year 10 of the Revolution, the mean revenues of the Hospitals at Lyons had been reduced to one-third. Owing to this deficit, there were insufficient funds to provide for the children brought into the Foundling Hospital there; and out of eight hundred and twenty children brought in from May 1795 to January 1796, twenty-eight only were alive on the first of February 1796*.

But the consular government re-established these administrations on a firmer foundation; and under Bonaparte and Louis XVIII. they have assumed a character and consistency combining in some degree the establishments previous to the Revolution with those which grew out of it.

* Description Physique et Politique du Departement du Rhone, par Verninaç, ancien prefet.-Lyon, An ix. p. 123, 124.

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Under the term Hôpital" are comprehended the receptacles for sickness and casualties; under that of "Hospice," places of reception for the poor and impotent. The "Depôts de Mendicité" are intended to prevent beggary*.

The funds by which these establishments are supported, are derived from the fixed property, which remained after confiscation and sale; from the "octrois municipaux et de bienfaisance," or taxes on provisions, &c. entering the large towns, granted for this purpose; from fines imposed for certain crimes; from a proportionate tax on tickets of admission to public entertainments; from voluntary donations and legacies; from the

quêtes," or solicitations in the churches, and from house to house; and, in aid of all these, from the direct assistance of the state, out of the public revenues.

But although the "hôpital" and "hospice" have reached the cases of the inhabitants of the cities in some degree, yet those who languish in want and distress in their own houses have appealed, and not in vain, to the humanity of the French people and of its government. In fact, ten years after the promulgation of the statute 27th

* There were Depôts de Mendicité established in 68 departments, between 25th April 1808, and 19th December 1811.

In the official style of 1800, bienfaisance was substituted for charité: the last word was too christian.

Henry VIII. c. 25, above mentioned, Francis I. issued an ordonnance in 1536, directing "that the impotent poor should be relieved in the parishes in which they dwelt; that reasonable alms should be distributed to them, according to rolls made out by the curés, the vicars, and the marguilliers, (a lay officer connected with the church analogous to our churchwarden ;) which alms were to arise from the quêtes, solicitations, and alms given daily, and collected in the churches." This custom appears to have been a revival of a plan proposed or adopted by St. Louis. In 1816 a system of domiciliary relief for the city of Paris was organized and promulgated by the French king, to which it appears that the labours of M. de Gerando principally contributed; and of which the leading arrangements are as follow:

"There are twelve offices (bureaux), under the direction of the Prefect of the Seine and the General Council of the Hospitals; each office consists of the Mayor of the arrondissement; of the Clergy of all descriptions, Catholic and Protestant; and twelve other administrators named by Government. Each arrondissement is divided into twelve quarters; and the administrators, assisted by the Sisters of Charity, take charge each specially of the several quarters. They meet in a central situation, and on a given day weekly. Attached to each office are medical men, mid

wives, Sisters of Charity, schoolmasters and mistresses, and" (what may appear ludicrous in the eyes of English readers,) "lawyers to give gratuitous advice. The poor receiving relief are divided into classes, according to their several wants, and relieved as much as possible in kind, and labour provided for those out of employment. The funds are derived from quétes, and collections in and out of churches, and from the general revenues of the state, distributed through the hands of the Council General of Hospitals *."

Legislation must originate in, and be directed by, circumstances which arise in the progress of society; and I think I can perceive, by the practice existing in the two last-mentioned countries of France and Scotland, that a rapid progress is making towards the complete adoption of a measure relative to the relief of the indigent; on the subject of which there prevails in England, where the law of the land on it has a long time been fully carried into practice, a great difference of opinion.

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I allude to the system of laws, which, after the abolition of legalized mendicity, commencing with godly exhortation, (1 Edward VI. c. 3.) asking and demanding by the clergyman, proceeded to inducing and persuading by the ordinary, (5 and 6 Edward VI. c. 2); then to taxation

*De Gerando, Visiteur du Pauvre, p. 145.

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