Several attempts to suppress mendicity have been unsuccessful. District asylums were established. No sooner were they filled than the vacancies in the beggar stands were immediately replenished by fresh subjects from the country; it being a general feeling that it is much easier and more comfortable to live by alms than by labour.
In towns where the police is well regulated, the only mendicants permitted to sojourn are paupers belonging to the parish. They are known by a tin badge, for which they pay at the police office.
No such thing is known as a legal claim for assistance from public or private charities.
In towns, destitute workmen or other persons in distress must be authorized by the municipality previous to soliciting public or private assistance. To this effect, the pauper makes known his case to the commissary of police of the quarter he inhabits, who makes inquiry among the neighbours. Should the destitute case of the applicant be established, the mayor grants him a certificate of indigence, which authorizes him to apply for relief to the public institutions, and to solicit private charity. It also exempts him (or rather causes his exemption) from the payment of taxes.
The principal cause of misery is inebriety; its frequency among the lower orders keeps them in poverty. The “_cabaret_” (wine and brandy shop) absorbs a great portion of their earnings. This vice is not confined to men; the women partake of it. It has decreased within the last five or six years, but is still considerable.
We now proceed to give some extracts from the more detailed report of Mr. Newman, who writes, it must be recollected, from Nantes. (pp. 171, 172, 173, 174, 178, 175, 176, 177.)
[Sidenote: Population of the Department, 470,093. Population of Nantes, 87,191.]
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.