the spot where they have hitherto found
work. Then, exasperated and enraged by injustice, already branded
as criminals, for faults of which they are innocent, frequently
at the end of all honourable resource, these unfortunates would
sink and die of famine if they remained honest. If they have, on
the other hand, already undergone an almost inevitable
corruption, ought we not to try and rescue them whilst there is
yet time? The presence of these orphans of the law in the midst
of other children protected by the society of whom we have
spoken, would be, moreover, a useful example to all. It would
show that if the guilty is unfailingly punished, his family lose
nothing, but rather gain in the esteem of the world, if by dint
of courage and virtues they achieve the re-establishing of a
tarnished name. Shall we say that the legislature desires to
render the chastisement still more terrible by virtually striking
the criminal father in the fortune of his innocent son? That
would be barbarous, immoral, irrational. Is it not, on the
contrary, of the highest moral consequence to prove to the people
that there is no hereditary succession of evil; that the original
stain is not ineffaceable?

Let us venture to hope that these reflections will appear
deserving of some attention from the new Society of Patronage.
Unquestionably it is painful to think that the state never takes
the initiative in these questions so vital and so deeply
interesting to social organisation.

The ancestor of the Martial family who first established himself on this
islet, on payment of a moderate rent, was a _ravageur_ (a
river-scavenger). The ravageurs, as well as the _debardeurs_ and
_dechireurs_ of boats, remain nearly the whole of the day plunged in
water up to the waist in the exercise of their trade. The _debardeurs_
bring ashore the floating wood. The _dechireurs_ break up the rafts
which have brought the wood. Equally aquatic as these other two
occupations, the business of a _ravageur_ is different. Going into the
water as far as possible, the _ravageur_, or mud-lark, draws up, by aid
of a long drag, the river sand from beneath the mud; then, collecting it
in large wooden bowls, he washes it like a person washing for gold dust,
and extracts from it metallic particles of all kinds,--iron, copper,
lead, tin, pewter, brass,--the results of the relics of all sorts of
utensils. The _ravageurs_, indeed, o