profound pity for these victims whom destitution gives over to debauchery; he confesses that they often conjured him, with tears, not to withdraw his unhappy protection from them. One of these suppliants assured him that if he abandoned her he would be the cause of herself and mother dying of hunger.[3] By the side of the liberty which girls of 15 have to become prostitutes, is placed that of parent-procurers. The weakening of family ties among us often causes these monstrous transactions to occur, on account of which women have been known to commit suicide. The moral sense is, moreover, perverted to such a degree, in our rural districts, that you there hear of mothers congratulating themselves on living by the proceeds of their daughters’ dishonour. Apart from the cynicism of the concubine-keepers who sell their unacknowledged daughters, workmen are met with who marry with the object of enslaving their wives; one such person assaulted his to make her go on the streets, saying to her: “Don’t think you deserve to eat, if you do not perform the only work you can make lucrative for me—I want money.”[4] The foregoing facts belong to _legal_ prostitution, which is always conjoined with that carried on clandestinely; it is certain that the _toleration-certificate_ of procuresses is nothing but a permit for all sorts of infamy. Agents for intercourse with certain women of fashion, they likewise carry on, almost without impediment, negotiations respecting girls under age. An author of the 15th century, estimating the number of “girls of the town” in Paris at 5000, attributes this enormous figure, unknown before, to the war which had affected the earnings of women, and to the culpable indifference of the provost, Ambroise de Loré. Statistics do not supply us, nevertheless, with reliable indications of the progress of the evil earlier than from the close of the year A.D. 1812. In Paris, less than a third of the fallen girls belong to prostitution as known to the law; the rest haunt the permitted houses, drive a profitable trade at the singing-saloons, public-houses, lodging-houses, and taverns. More than 25,000 of them are supported by a number of immoral men who, in their turn, are the support of a great many places of public resort, where both soul and body are lost through drunkenness and profligacy. In our different towns,[5] secret prostitution works the same kind of ravages. It is generally noticed that the destitution of women gives a great increase to it during industrial “crises.” Our soldiers and colonists have likewise carried into Algeria morals previously unknown to the Arab polygamy. So great was the horror the Mussulmans had for prostitution, that at Algiers, as recently as the 17th century, prostitutes were thrown into the sea. In the present day, women who go to get employment in our colony ordinarily find their livelihood only in debauchery and concubinage; “unfortunates” subjected to the brutalities of our