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.