In 1811, M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, drafted a bill for the regulation of prostitutes, but it never went into effect, and the imperial ordinance drawn by the prefect has been lost. Five years later, M. Anglis, Prefect of Police under Louis XVIII., attempted the same thing with no better success, the law officers of the crown seeming to have supposed that the general provisions of the articles of the code on public decency and "outrages upon public morality" covered the particular case of prostitution. The last efforts that were made in France to obtain a law for the regulation of prostitution were in 1819 and 1822, when the ministry seriously thought of settling the whole matter by a royal declaration. These endeavors had the same fate as the former ones, leading to no result. A general impression has prevailed of late years that the moral sense of the public would be shocked by any legislative act licensing so great a sin as prostitution; and as the government has assumed, without constitutional warrant, the control and regulation of prostitutes, and has exercised as full authority as it could have done had there been a law on the subject, the deficiency has hardly been felt. A conscientious official has occasionally experienced qualms of conscience at acting without legal warrant; the government has sometimes been frightened by a menace of resistance from some bold lawyer, but no trouble has ever actually arisen, and custom now gives to the police regulations the force of law. We shall review these regulations in another place; meanwhile a glance must be cast upon the progress of morality in France during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The gallantry which distinguished the court of Henry IV. became more refined, though not less criminal, under Louis XIII. Adultery and seduction were every-day matters in the circles which educated Mary, Queen of Scots, and developed the wit of the author of Grammont's Memoirs. Every lady was presumed to have a lover; every man of fashion more than one mistress. Richelieu boasted that no lady could reject him when he chose to throw the handkerchief, and Mazarin was accused of intrigues with the queen herself. Louis did not blush to visit his mistresses at the head of his guards, and in all the pomp of royalty; and, as an instance of their influence over him, it has been stated that it was at the request of Mademoiselle de la Fayette that he consented to visit his wife nine months before the birth of Louis XIV.