relief prescribed by the 'Rights of Man,' one which was never realised … its extravagant aims were in the past, and still remain, the greatest obstacle to practical solutions."
At the time of the Revolution there were forty-eight hospitals and hospices in Paris. The National Assembly declared them all public property in 1793 and took over their administration. An Administrative Commission of seven members was formed in the same year. In the following three years the personnel was changed twenty-two times. The rapid succession of events rendered their work barren. Depression of paper money, stoppage of trade, deprivation of property, and loss of confidence, the consequence of compulsory alienation, rendered direct administration impossible, and finally the work was handed over to "greedy contractors."
The first administrators under the Revolution directed their attention to the centralisation and consolidation of the various foundations. M. Mauger emphatically approves this part of their work. The only grave fault, he says, that we can ascribe to them is the "revival of the 'ateliers de charité' which, created in the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II., had produced detestable results." After a few months, public beneficence had to support "43,000 individuals always discontented with their lot, always ready to disturb the public peace. After having made them carry out all the work possible in Paris—the demolition of the Bastille, repair of the roads, cleaning of the Seine and its banks, digging of the St Martin Canal, etc.—they were obliged to look out for other work for them. … They thought of the digging of canals, the cultivation of certain barren cantons of the centre and the west, but the workmen left the yards and the terror in Paris only increased." The
