to do garrison duty in
fortified places not exposed to an attack by enemies, and to assist in
the different arsenals and laboratories, foundries, and depots of
military or naval stores. Others are attached to the police offices, and
some as gendarmes, to arrest suspected or guilty individuals; or as
garnissaires, to enforce the payment of contributions from the unwilling
or distressed. When the period for the payment of taxes is expired, two
of these janissaires present themselves at the house of the persons in
arrears, with a billet signed by the director of the contributions and
countersigned by the police commissary. If the money is not immediately
paid, with half a crown to each of them besides, they remain quartered in
the house, where they are to be boarded and to receive half a crown a day
each until an order from those who sent them informs them that what was
due to the state has been acquitted. After their entrance into a house,
and during their stay, no furniture or effects whatever can be removed or
disposed of, nor can the master or mistress go out-of-doors without being
accompanied by one of them.

In the houses appropriated to our invalids, the inmates are very well
treated, and Government takes great care to make them satisfied with
their lot. The officers have large halls, billiards, and reading-room to
meet in; and the common men are admitted into apartments adjoining
libraries, from-which they can borrow what books they contain, and read
them at leisure. This is certainly a very good and even a humane
institution, though these libraries chiefly contain military histories or
novels.

As to the morals of these young invalids, they may be well conceived when
you remember the morality of our Revolution; and that they, without any
religious notions or restraints, were not only permitted, but encouraged
to partake of the debauchery and licentiousness which were carried to
such an extreme in our armies and encampments. In an age when the
passions are strongest, and often blind reason and silence conscience,
they have not the means nor the permission to marry; in their vicinity it
is, therefore, more difficult to discover one honest woman or a dutiful
wife, than hundreds of harlots and of adulteresses. Notwithstanding that
many of them have been accused before the tribunals of seductions, rape,
and violence against the sex, not one has been punished for what the
morality of our Government consider mer