at that date was extremely high – about 50 percent, in large part because families sent their infants to be wet nursed. The mortality rate in the foundling hospitals, which also sent the babies out to be wet nursed, proved worse, however, and most of the infants sent there likely perished. The first constitutions of the French Revolution undertook as a state debt the support of every foundling. For a time premiums were given to the mothers of illegitimate children, the enfants de la patrie, by the law of 12 Brumaire, An II. Toute recherche de la paternité est interdite, while by art. 341 of the Code Napoléon, la recherche de la matérnité est admise. , laws of France relating to this part of what is called l'Assistance publique were: the decree of January 1811 the instruction of February 1823 the decree of 5 March 1852 the law of De l'administration des finances of 5 May 1869 the law of 24 July 1889, and the law of 27 June 1904 These laws carried out the general principles of the law of 7 Frimaire An V., which completely decentralized the system of national poor relief established by the Revolution. The enfants assistés included, besides (1) orphans and (2) foundlings proper, (3) children abandoned by their parents, (4) ill-treated, neglected or morally abandoned children whose parents have been deprived of their parental rights by the decision of a court of justice, and (5) children, under sixteen years of age, of parents condemned for certain crimes, whose parental rights have been delegated by a tribunal to the state. Children classified under 1-5 were termed pupilles de l'assistance, wards of public charity, and were distinguished by the law of 1904 from children under the protection of the state, classified as: (1) enfants secourus, i.e., children whose parents or relatives are unable, through poverty, to support them; (2) enfants en dépôt, i.e., children of persons undergoing a judicial sentence and children temporarily taken in while their parents are in hospital, and (3) enfants en garde, i.e., children who have either committed or been the victim of some felony or crime and are placed under state care by judicial authority. The asylum which received all these children was a departmental (établissement dépositaire), and not a communal institution. The établissement dépositaire was usually the ward of a hospice, in which, with the exception of children en dépôt