Wretchedness in all its forms naturally goes hand in hand with these false principles of legislation. Thanks to the boasted progress of modern days, there is more suffering and misery in Paris than in any other city on the continent of Europe. Those who speak from personal observation of the social condition in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, acknowledge that pauperism is most gigantic in the latter capital. In the year 1866, Paris contained 1,791,980 inhabitants, of whom 105,119 were paupers, or 40,644 families who received aid from the municipal authorities. This gives one pauper to every seventeen inhabitants; but the number of destitute who stand in need of help is at least as large again. The Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, the many other charitable societies, and the pastors, support and succor quite as many more families, the greater portion of whom are also dependent on the public. And with all this, most societies are compelled to turn away nearly as many destitute as they can relieve. It is therefore not too much to assume that one tenth of the Parisians are reduced to the verge of absolute poverty. And how inadequate, at the best, is the relief doled out by the municipality to the poor! A couple of pounds of bread each week, a few cast-off garments, occasionally some bedding, is about all which a family can usually expect to receive from this source. In 1866, the city disbursed, by way of relief, four millions of francs among 40,644 families, which gives forty-eight francs and sixty-five centimes per year for each family, or eighteen francs and sixty-five centimes per head. But it should be borne in mind that bread sells at one fourth of a franc per pound, which shows how insignificant the relief is which the otherwise so extravagant Paris municipality bestows on its destitute. And it should be further remembered that a family has to pay an average annual rental of one hundred and forty-one francs and twenty-five centimes--which average was only one hundred and thirteen francs and forty-five centimes prior to the year 1860. These statistics sufficiently demonstrate the grave importance which the solution of the social problem threatens to assume in France.