"Le mur murant Paris, rend Paris murmurant."[13] The multitude was not content with murmuring; the moment that a favourable opportunity occurred, it went to the barriers and broke them down. These were reestablished by the administration with great trouble, and the smugglers often took them down by main force. The _Octroi_ revenue from the imports, which used to amount to 70,000 francs, now fell to less than 30,000. Those persons who have considered the figures of the present revenue, will assuredly not compare such very dissimilar epochs. But it is said that ameliorations in the moral world may often be effected without expense. What were those for which the public was indebted to the direct exertions of Bailly? The question is simple, but repentance will follow the having asked it. My answer is this: One of the most honourable victories gained by mathematics over the avaricious prejudices of the administrations of certain towns has been, in our own times, the radical suppression of gambling-houses. I will hasten to prove that such a suppression had already engaged Bailly's attention, that he had partly effected it, and that no one ever spoke of those odious dens with more eloquence and firmness. "I declare," wrote the Mayor of Paris on the 5th of May, 1790, "that the gambling-houses are in my opinion a public scourge. I think that these meetings not only should not be tolerated, but that they ought to be sought out and prosecuted, as much as the liberty of the citizens, and the respect due to their homes, will admit. "I regard the tax that has been levied from such houses as a disgraceful tribute. I do not think that it is allowable to employ a revenue derived from vice and disorder, even to do good. In consequence of these principles, I have never granted any permit to gambling-houses; I have constantly refused them. I have constantly announced that not only they would not be tolerated, but that they would be sought out and prosecuted." If I add that Bailly suppressed all spectacles of animal-fighting, at which the multitude cannot fail to acquire ferocious and sanguinary habits, I shall have a right to ask of every superficial writer, how he would justify the epithet of sterile, applied with such assurance to the administration of our virtuous colleague. Anxious to carry out in practice that which had been largely recognized theoretically in the declaration of rights--the complete separation of religion from civil law,--Bailly presented himself before the National Assembly on the 14th of May, 1791, and demanded, in the name of the city of Paris, the abolition of an order of things which, in the then state of men's minds, gave rise to great abuses. If declarations of births, of marriages, and of deaths are now received by civil officers in a form agreeing with all religious opinions, the country is chiefly indebted for it to the intelligent firmness of Bailly.