The infirmities which might be pleaded as exemptions were severely scrutinized, and were determined by the law with critical inhumanity: inveterate asthma, habitual spitting of blood, and incipient consumption only entitled the sufferer to a provisional dispensation. Men who were incapable of enduring the fatigues of war, or who might be more useful to the state in pursuing their own employments or their studies, were allowed to provide substitutes or purchase an exemption by the payment of three hundred francs; but this was an early law, and it is not likely that the pecuniary alternative was ever accepted when the waste of men became excessive. ♦SUBSTITUTES.♦ The substitute was required to be a Frenchman, between twenty-five and forty years of age (and therefore not liable to the conscription), not below five feet one, of a strong constitution, and in robust health. In addition to his own name, he was to take that of the person for whom he served, and by that name he was to be known in the army: the principal was still upon the list, and subject to be called upon if his representative deserted or withdrew; nor could he obtain a definitive exemption unless he produced proof that the substitute had either been killed or disabled in service, or had served the full time which the laws required; during war the term was indefinite, in peace it was fixed at five years. During the latter years of Buonaparte’s government men who could be admitted as substitutes were necessarily so rare, that their price rose from two hundred to a thousand Napoleons. ♦PUNISHMENTS FOR EVADING THE CONSCRIPTION.♦