It would be difficult to say whether or no France compares favourably with England in the matter of philanthropy and the poor laws. But this much must be admitted in favour of the Republican Government,—charity was never so widely practised, was never so effectual or so free-handed, as it is to-day in France. You will hear the futile nobles and those who would pass for a part of the aristocracy by the mere virtue of adopting its vices and prejudices, assure you that everything was better under the _ancien régime_; that shopkeepers, peasants, farmers, and workmen were all better off when they depended upon an absolute king. French Catholics, like nearly all other Catholics I know, soar above argument, logic, the surprises, revelations, and irrefragable testimony of history. What they desire to have been, to have happened, must have been and happened, and there is nothing more to be said. And so to-day, whenever a handful of titled malcontents out of office, followed by a train of wealthy and fashionable imitators, rail at a Government indifferent to their interests, it is solemnly maintained that the people groan and sweat under tyrannical laws, and that France has gone to the dogs. A statement more contrary to truth and fact could not possibly be made. Without examining even the enormous efforts of private charity to improve the condition of the poor, we need only take up the subject of Public Assistance to assure ourselves that the incessant preoccupation, under republican rule, of the municipalities all over France is the amelioration of the lot of the unfortunate classes of humanity. If you lend an indulgent ear to the Catholics, they will assure you that the municipality of Paris, because hitherto it has been democratic and secular, is a mere gang of thieves, that the public funds are squandered on private ends, and that not a penny of its vast revenues finds its way into the pockets of the poor. This is simply a calumny—a stupid, groundless invention. The _Assistance Publique_ has done more for the poor than all the kings of France put together. In the days of Louis XIV. there was no such thing as a public lying-in hospital. Wretched women, without a home, or means of any kind to obtain shelter for the birth of their children had to go to the Hôtel de Ville, where they lay on the floors, and even two occupied each of the few beds, and childbirth took place in a state of indescribable filth and discomfort.