directed to the homes of the poor, to the bedside of the sick man lying in his garret, to the acts of the Sister of Charity, rather than the liberality which gives no greater personal trouble than the signing of a cheque. The Parisians, knowing that the chief part of the funds for their great hospitals is derived from the municipal purse, regard them as open establishments on which the sick poor have something like that claim which the English pauper has on his parish. The public mind is therefore at ease as to the means which the unfortunate have of obtaining medical treatment at any time. In the history of French hospitals will be found the names of many munificent donors (the latest in the list is Madame de Lariboisière*). But their increase under municipal protection, and chiefly by municipal support, tends to remove them more and more every year from the reach of private charity, and to leave more abundant private effort for the comfort of the poor sick at the command of the Assistance Publique.

*The gift of this lady was to the extent of £80,000 towards the fine hospital which bears her name.

CHAPTER V.

OUT-DOOR SICK RELIEF.

FRENCH hospitals being all, more or less, State institutions, supported by municipal funds as well as private acts of charity, incur a responsibility towards the public which is not borne by English hospitals. In the same way, the home relief of the sick as well as of the poor, being the operation of a mixed action-viz., that of an administration supplemented by the efforts of charitable ladies and gentlemen,-is uniform, constant, and unattended with those laxities which from time to time provoke the indignation of the English public. Whenever the English Poor Laws are publicly discussed, fifty complaints arise among the administrators and executive officers of the Poor Law, the public that pays, and the public that is relieved. In Paris, disposed as the Opposition in the Corps Législatif was to pick holes in Napoleon's purple, there was no attempt under

his régime to attack the Assistance Publique administration. The theatre poor tax has redoubtable enemies; but there are no discontented Poor-law officers; there are no good and bad arrondissements; no execrably managed maisons de secours; no overworked medical officers; no neglected cases, nor slovenly dispensing, nor conveyance of fever patients in the first cab at hand.

I shall describe a maison de secours, in its relation to the poor of a section of an arrondissement; to the hospitals, to out-door medical relief, and in its admirable internal economics, conducted by intelligent sisters, who have a mission as well as a wage-Christian charity as well as the means provided by the Assistance Publique. These maisons de secours, I may state at once, are so many well-ordered dispensaries, well worthy the attention of those politicians who are anxious to get at something like a sufficient, well-knit Poor-law code. They work in harmony with the distributors of out-door relief on the one hand, and with the hospitals on the other, and under that which is entirely absent from the English system-viz. "constant, intelligent inspection." Within the Assistance, I find no barristersnephews of "one of us"-appointed to report on the infirmaries for the aged and the nurseries for orphans. The fitness of the individual for the office is a point which is an imperative necessity to the

French mind; and it springs from th ability which pervades all classes and makes a Nélaton a household na eaves of the humblest. He is surged and applauded because he doffs hi coat to reach the sick man's bed. S Lord Chancellor on his death-bed brother peer M.D.? The question i of much more than the average p comprehend. All the controversies administration might be resolved int it that, although it has been show cent. of the pauperism of England the neglect or maladministration of they are still neglected or maladmi G. Wallis gave this evidence to a Se of the House of Commons in 1854; years afterwards, we find that the ca management, for which Gwydyr Ho remains concentrated upon the medi of the Poor-law administration. T per cent. of your pauperism is unt in the matter of Mr. Hardy's* Act are true to the traditional obstinad headedness of their department; an languishes while the asylum founda laid. Yet the dispensary lies at evil would help to block the way

*Now Lord Cranbrook

tunate from the sick-bed to the workhouse, and so lessen the 72 per cent.; while the asylum is but Bicêtre and La Salpétrière, and the IncurablesHommes and the Incurables-Femmes over again, with the Dépôt de Mendicité bungled and superadded. These places are retreats for society's utter failures. Victims of our social plan indirectly, if also culpable individually through their vices, the aged and infirm of society, who are helpless and have nothing, command public compassion. Whether this compassion should be expressed in the shape of country asylums is a matter on which, I think, some light will be thrown by the experiences of M. Husson's department. But the importance of advancing to the assistance of the poor man in sickness must be plain to all who have been at the pains of noting how the ranks of the poor are recruited. Protect the aged paupers; but, above all, so help the young in sickness that they shall not fall into hopeless poverty. In the regulations of the Assistance Publique of Paris, in regard to the sick poor, this primary and fundamental rule of Poor-law economy is kept steadily in view. They fortify, in a remarkable manner, the line of argument and the significance of the array of facts contained in the late address of the President of your Poor-law Medical Officers' Association. These regulations, as they have been lately amended, I am enabled, through the courtesy of the Directeur-Général, to