By that decree a depôt de mendicité was directed to be established in each department, at the expense partly of the nation and partly of the department. Within 15 days after its establishment, the Prefect of the department was to give public notice of its being opened, and all persons without means of subsistence were bound to proceed to it, and all persons found begging were to be arrested and taken to it.
By a subsequent arrêté of the 27th October, 1808, it was ordered that all beggars should on their arrest be placed in the first instance in the maison d’arrêt of the district; and transferred from thence, if guilty of vagrancy, to the maison de detention, or prison; if not vagrants, to the depôt de mendicité. In the depôt they were to be clothed in the house dress, confined to regular and very early hours, the sexes separated, subject to severe punishments (rising to six months’ solitary imprisonment (cachot) on bread and water) for disobedience or other misconduct, or attempts to escape; deprived of all intercourse, except by open letters with their relations or friends, and kept to work at wages to be regulated by the Prefect, two-thirds of which were to belong to the establishment, and the remaining third was to be paid to them on their quitting the depôt.
The conditions on which a person might obtain his release from a depôt de mendicité are not stated.
The provisions of the code pénal appear to leave that question to the discretion of the Executive.
Section 274 of that code enacts that every person found begging in a place containing a public establishment for the prevention of mendicity, shall be imprisoned for from three to six months, and then removed to the depôt de mendicité. Under section 275, if there be no such establishment in the place where he is found begging, his imprisonment is to last only from one to three months; if, however, he has begged out of the canton in which he is domiciled, it is to last from six months to two years.
After having suffered his punishment, he is to remain (apparently in the depôt de mendicité) at the disposition of Government.
Such was the state of the law respecting purely charitable, and what may be called penal, relief at the time of the establishment of the kingdom of the Netherlands. We have stated these provisions at some length, because they form, with little material alteration, the existing law on the subject in France. No change of any importance appears to have been made by the late Government of the Netherlands, or by the present Belgian Government, with respect to the hospices or the bureaux de bienfaisance; but with respect to foundlings, an arrêté of the 2nd June, 1825, declared that the expense of their maintenance ought to be supplied by the hospices, and so far as these were unable to meet it, from the local revenues of the commune or the province in which they had been abandoned--a provision which has been the subject of much complaint, as imposing a heavy and peculiar burthen on the few towns which possess foundling hospitals. And with respect to monts-de-piété, an arrêté of the 31st October, 1826, directed the local authorities of towns and communes to prepare regulations for the management of their respective monts-de-piété, their support, and the employment of the profits, subject to certain general rules; among which are,--
