In the department Loire Inférieure there is no asylum for mendicants; but Nantes has a species of workhouse, “St. Joseph’s House,” supported entirely by private subscriptions. To this house the tribunals often send vagabonds, in virtue of the 274th article of the Penal Code, although the directors of the establishment have contested, and still contest, the right assumed by the judges to do so; and they never receive any person so sent as a criminal to be detained a certain number of days at labour as if in a prison, but merely give him a refuge as an act of charity, and liberty to leave the place, if he likes to go before the time expires. The number of vagrants that formerly infested Nantes (strangers to the department as well as to the city) have decreased to about a tenth part since begging in the streets was prohibited, and the paupers sent to this establishment. The hospitals of Nantes receive all workmen, travellers, and needy strangers, that fall sick in the city (if foreigners, at the charge to their consuls of 1_s._ 3_d._ sterling per day for men, and 10_d._ for women.) If a man, (and his family also,) being destitute, wishes to return to his native place, and has not rendered himself liable to be committed as a vagrant, the préfet has the power to give a passport to him for that place; on the production of which at the mairie of the commune from which he sets out he receives from the public funds of the department three halfpence per league for the distance from thence to the next place he is to be relieved at, and so on to the end of his journey, each place he has to stop at being set down on his passport; if he deviates from the route designated, he is arrested as a vagabond. There is in France throughout the whole country a general union for each of several trades, the carpenters, bakers, masons, tailors, &c. In each city or town of consequence, each society has a member who is called “the mother,” who receives the weekly contributions of those who reside in that place, affords relief to all of its members passing through it, and is obliged to procure work for the applicant, or support him at a fixed rate, established by their bye-laws, until a situation be provided for him there or elsewhere. Those unions sometimes assume a very dangerous power, by compelling masters to hire all their members that are without work, before they engage one man who does not belong to them. _Destitute Able-bodied._