education, die or languish for lack of sustenance; the State, which has
no money for itself, has none for them. And what is worse, it hinders
private parties from taking them in charge; being Jacobin, that is to
say intolerant and partisan, it has proscribed worship, driven nuns out
of the hospitals, closed Christian schools, and, with its vast power,
it prevents others from carrying out at their own expense the social
enterprises which it no longer cares for.

And yet the needs for which this work provides have never been so
great nor so imperative. In ten years,[3148] the number of foundlings
increased from 23,000 to 62,000; it is, as the reports state, a deluge:
there are 1097 instead of 400 in Aisne, 1500 in Lot-et-Garonne, 2035 in
la Manche, 2043 in Bouches-du-Rhone, 2673 in Calvados. From 3000 to
4000 beggars are enumerated in each department and about 300,000 in all
France.[3149] As to the sick, the infirm, the mutilated, unable to earn
their living, it suffices, for an idea of their multitude, to consider
the regime to which the political doctors have just subjected France,
the Regime of fasting and bloodletting. Two millions of Frenchmen have
marched under the national flag, and eight hundred thousand have died
under it;[3150] among the survivors, how many cripples, how many with
one arm and with wooden legs! All Frenchmen have eaten dog-bread for
three years and often have not had enough of that to live on; over
a million have died of starvation and poverty; all the wealthy and
well-to-do Frenchmen have been ruined and have lived in constant fear
of the guillotine; four hundred thousand have wasted away in prisons;
of the survivors, how many shattered constitutions, how many bodies and
brains disordered by an excess of suffering and anxiety, by physical and
moral wear and tear![3151]

Now, in 1800, assistance is lacking for this crowd of civil and military
invalids, the charitable establishments being no longer in a condition
to furnish it. Under the Constituent Assembly, through the suppression
of ecclesiastical property and the abolition of octrois, a large portion
of their revenue had been cut off, that assigned to them out of octrois
and the tithes. Under the Legislative Assembly and the Convention,
through the dispersion and persecution of nuns and monks, they were
deprived of a body of able male and female volunteer servants who,
instituted for centuries, gave their labor without stint. Under the
Conv