When factions usurped the supremacy of the Kings, vigilance augmented with insecurity; and almost everybody who was not an opposer, who refused being an accomplice, or feared to be a victim, was obliged to serve as an informer and vilify himself by becoming a spy.  The rapidity with which parties followed and destroyed each other made the criminals as numerous as the sufferings of honour and loyalty innumerable; and I am sorry to say few persons exist in my degraded country, whose firmness and constancy were proof against repeated torments and trials, and who, to preserve their lives, did not renounce their principles and probity.

Under the reign of Robespierre and of the Committee of Public Safety, every member of Government, of the clubs, of the tribunals, and of the communes, had his private spies; but no regular register was kept of their exact number.  Under the Directory a Police Minister was nominated, and a police office established.  According to the declaration of the Police Minister, Cochon, in 1797, the spies, who were then regularly paid, amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand; and of these, thirty thousand did duty in this capital.  How many there were in 1799, when Fouche, for the first time, was appointed a chief of the department of police, is not known, but suppose them doubled within two years; their increase since is nevertheless immense, considering that France has enjoyed upwards of four years’ uninterrupted Continental peace, and has not been exposed to any internal convulsions during the same period.

You may, perhaps, object that France is not rich enough to keep up as numerous an army of spies as of soldiers; because the expense of the former must be triple the amount of the latter.  Were all these spies, now called police agents, or agents of the secret police, paid regular salaries, your objection would stand, but most of them have no other reward than the protection of the police; being employed in gambling—­houses, in coffee—­houses, in taverns, at the theatres, in the public gardens, in the hotels, in lottery offices, at pawnbrokers’, in brothels, and in bathing-houses, where the proprietors or masters of these establishments pay them.  They receive nothing from the police, but when they are enabled to make any great discoveries, those who have been robbed or defrauded, and to whom they have been serviceable, are, indeed, obliged to present them with some douceur, fixed by the police at the rate of the value recovered; but such occurrences are merely accidental.  To these are to be added all individuals of either sex who by the law are obliged to obtain from the police licenses to exercise their trade, as pedlars, tinkers, masters of puppet-shows, wild beasts, etc.  These, on receiving their passes, inscribe themselves, and take the oaths as spies; and are forced to send in their regular reports of what they hear or see.  Prostitutes, who, all over this country, are under the necessity of paying