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 for regular licenses, are obliged also to give information, from
time to time, to the nearest police commissary of what they observe or
what they know respecting their visitors, neighbours, etc. The number of
unfortunate women of this description who had taken out licenses during
the year 12, or from September, 1803, to September, 1804, is officially
known to have amounted to two hundred and twenty thousand, of whom forty
thousand were employed by the armies.