soldiery, are bartered, like beasts of burden, at every change of garrison, and our army may be followed by the track of the infection it leaves in even the smallest villages. After the conquest (of Algeria) the daughters of the original possessors of the soil had not even the means of living except by shame.[6] This sketch suffices to show how unfitted we are to colonise a people which, on the evidence of every high and competent authority, has adopted our vices without acquiring any of our good qualities.[7] In fact, the Mussulman code, the Jewish religion and morals, permit, upon the African soil, polygamy, divorce, and repudiation, with the obligation, on the father’s part, of supporting all his children, and the prohibition of repudiating a woman without providing for her; these duties rendered manifold marriages a privilege of wealth. The “senatus-consultum” which governs, on the model of our code, the Arabs who are naturalised French, changes nothing of the influence exerted on them by climate, religion, education, and manners. Thus, by abjuring every duty to wives with whom, otherwise, they are free to maintain relations, uncurbed and uncontrolled, under the title of concubines; by leaving their unacknowledged children to die of destitution, they obtain the title of French citizen, which should be to them the reward of virtue and honour. In that frightful famine when the brutality of the strong to the weak was so monstrous, in which Religion and Charity had not arms wide enough to enfold the legions of repudiated women, and of children without fathers, the conviction might force itself that our code is more deadly for Algeria than are its noxious animals.[8] Our legislation for morals is an active cause of our want of success in colonizing; for our moral responsibility being able to bring nothing but intermixture to the races in our colonies, degenerated by polygamy or slavery, the young negresses, seduced and abandoned, knowing none of the duties of the family and of maternity, are living in the most deplorable degradation.