Amidst a population excited to discontent by these causes, another circumstance has operated with peculiar force, which we do not recollect to have seen hitherto noticed in disquisitions on this subject--this is the prodigious number of _natural children_ and foundlings at Paris. It is well known that ever since the close of the first Revolution the number of illegitimate births in Paris has borne a very great proportion to the legitimate; they are generally as 10,000 to 18,000 or 19,000. For a long time past, every third child seen in the streets of Paris has been a bastard. Hitherto this important feature of society has been considered with reference to the state of morality in regard to the relation of the sexes which it indicates; but attend to its social and political effects. These bastards do not always remain children; they grow up to be men and women. The foundlings of Paris, already sufficiently numerous, are swelled by a vast concourse of a similar class over all France, who flock, when they have the means of transport, to the capital as the common sewer of the commonwealth. There are at present about 1,050,000 souls in the French metropolis. Suppose that a third of these are natural children, there are then 350,000 persons, most of them foundlings of illegitimate birth, in that capital. Taking a fourth of them as capable of bearing arms, we have 85,000 _bastards constantly ready to fight in Paris_. Consider only the inevitable results of such a state of things in an old and luxurious metropolis, teeming with indigence, abounding with temptation, overflowing with stimulants to the passions. The _enfant trouvé_ of Paris, when grown up, becomes a _gamin de Paris_, just as naturally and inevitably as a chrysalis becomes a butterfly. He has obtained enough of instruction to enable him to imbibe temptation, and not enough to enable him to combat it. He has in general received the rudiments of education: he can read the novels of Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, and George Sand; he can study daily the _Réforme_ or _National_, or _Démocratie Pacifique_. He looks upon political strife as a game at hazard, in which the winning party obtain wealth and honour, mistresses, fortunes, and enjoyments. As to religion, he has never heard of it, except as a curious relic of the olden time, sometimes very effective on the opera stage; as to industry, he knows not what it is; as to self-control, he regards it as downright folly where self-indulgence is practicable. The most powerful restraints on the passions of men--parents, children, property--are to him unknown. He knows not to whom he owes his birth; his offspring are as strange to him as his parents, for they, like him, are consigned to the Foundling Hospital: he has nothing in the world he can call his own, except a pair of stout arms to aid in the formation of barricades, and a dauntless heart ready at any moment to accept the hazard of death or pleasure.