A more confirmed pessimist, by the way, than this journalist I have not seen in France. He was quite convinced that the Republicans would show a majority in the seven circumscriptions or districts of Lille at the elections in the autumn, and he criticised very severely the attitude of the Catholics at Lille in regard to politics. 'They are excellent people,' he said, 'but they think too much of the souls of the people and not enough of their votes.'
I ventured to suggest that perhaps the picture which he had himself set before me of the moral condition of the city of Lille, at least, might be thought to afford some excuse for this preoccupation of the Catholics with the spiritual rather than the political interests of the people.
But to this he would not listen for a moment.
'No, no!' he said; 'the first thing to be done for the souls of the people is to get rid of these fellows at Paris! Are they not paganizing the country? Here is this new law which is demoralising the army. Why do they wish to force the seminarists into the service? Is it not avowedly because they think this will stop the recruiting for the ranks of the clergy? Why are they attacking the foundations of the magistracy? Is it notbecause the French magistrates stand between them and the rights of the French clergy as French citizens? How far off are we from a revival of Danton's beautiful doctrine that, in order to consummate the regeneration of society, all conditions imposed upon the eligibility of citizens to act as judges ought to be immediately abolished, so that a tinker, or a butcher, or a bootblack, or a chiffonnier might be made a French magistrate just as well as a trained student of the laws? As you know, one of the first things Danton, as Minister of Justice, did was to carry through the Convention his famous decree making this doctrine law in France!
'I am worn out,' he said, 'with trying to make our good people here understand that they must go into the battle-field of politics and put these fellows out of power at Paris if they mean to prevent France from falling into absolute anarchy once more. I cannot make them move, and I believe we shall be beaten in all the seven districts of Lille.'
I am glad to say the event proved that my pessimistic friend was by far too pessimistic. Of the seven seats to which the arrondissement of Lille is entitled, four were carried by the Monarchists—in two cases without an attempt seriously to contest them; and if the seven candidates had been voted for on a single list, that list would have been elected by the arrondissement.
The Monarchists threw in the whole arrondissement 53,135 votes, the Opportunist Republicans 31,019, the Radicals 9,191, and the Socialists 1,011. So that the Monarchists had a clear majority of 11,814 votes over all the factions of the Republican party put together. In one district of Lille, the 1st, the Boulangists threw 4,376 votes. If we put these down, which we have no right to do, as Republican votes, the Monarchists still show a clear majority of 7,438 in the whole arrondissement of Lille, and, as I have said, if the representation of France by arrondissements were really a representation by arrondissements and not by circumscriptions, the seven hundred thousand people of this great and prosperous department of North-Eastern France would now be represented at Paris not by four Monarchists and three Republicans, but by seven Monarchists. This may serve to show how exceedingly unsafe it is to assume that the nominal party complexion of the majority in a Chamber elected as the present French Chamber has been really gives foreign observers anything like an accurate notion of the state of public opinion and the drift of popular feeling in France at this time.
A friend to whom I am indebted for an analysis made with great care of the electoral results, not in this very important department alone, but throughout France, points out to me the exceedingly significant difference between the majorities given to the Monarchists and to the Republican deputies. In the 4th District of Lille, for example, M. des Rotours, the Monarchist candidate, received 10,555 votes, being the largest poll by far given to any candidate in the whole arrondissement, and not one vote was thrown against him. In the 6th District the Republican candidate was declared to be elected by no more than 199 majority in a total poll of 14,833 votes. In the 3rd District the Monarchist was elected by a majority of 1,441 votes, in a total poll of 16,081 votes. In the 5th District the Republican was returned by a majority of 281 votes in a total poll of 15,321 votes. In the 7th District the Monarchist was returned by a majority of 237 in a total poll of 14,463 votes. In the 1st District of Hazebrouck the Monarchist was returned by a majority of 6,861, in a total poll of 11,129 votes, and in the 2nd District of Hazebrouck by a majority of 5,269 in a total poll of 10,291!
Hazebrouck is an essentially Flemish town of some 10,000 inhabitants, and the arrondissement, which comprises 7 cantons and 53 communes, contains 112,921 inhabitants, is absolutely Flemish. The early sixteenth-century church of St.-Nicholas at Hazebrouck, with its lofty and graceful spire, was begun about the time of the first voyage of Columbus, and is one of the most beautiful extant Flemish buildings of that time. The people of this arrondissement and their neighbours in the arrondissement of Dunkirk were almost as famous before 1789 as the Dutch for their skill as florists and their success in developing all manner of eccentric varieties of roses, tulips, primroses, and pinks. I do not know that they ever managed to produce a blue rose, but they came very near it, and at the present time their rich and level country is gay with cottage gardens. They are given to sociability also, for the arrondissement possesses, I am told, at least one cabaret for every 70 inhabitants. But then the cabarets in the department at large average 1 to every 61 inhabitants, and in the thoroughly agricultural arrondissement of Avesnes they number 1 for every 38 inhabitants. In the arrondissement of Avesnes, a property of from five to twenty hectares is called a small farm. In the arrondissement of Hazebrouck, a farmer cultivating from six to fifty hectares passes for an agriculturist of the middle class. The people are prosperous, and their hostility to the Republic seems to have its origin chiefly in the intolerance and extravagance of the Government. This is the case too, apparently, with their neighbours in the arrondissement of Dunkirk. The 1st District of Dunkirk elected a Boulangist Revisionist by a solid vote of 7,821 against 4,806 votes, given not to a Government Republican but to a Radical, while the 2nd District of Dunkirkelected a Monarchist by a majority of 5,036 votes in a poll of 11,168.
In the face of such figures as these it seems to me that the friends of religion and of liberty in the Department of the Nord hardly merit the reproach put upon them by my pessimistic journalist at Lille of lukewarmness in the political battle of 1889.
Neither he nor any one can well accuse them of lukewarmness in any other matter affecting the interests either of religion or of liberty. And I cannot help hoping that my Northern pessimist may perhaps have over-estimated the prevalence of juvenile prostitution in Lille as much as he certainly underestimated the devotion of the Monarchists of Lille to their political flag. His gloomy prognostications as to the issue at the polls were probably enough inspired by his thorough knowledge of the extraordinary preparations made by the authorities for manipulating the returns. On this point he gave me some particulars which appear to be borne out by subsequent events. It is curious for example to learn from the analytical table to which I have already referred in connection with the elections at Lille, that of the 164 Government candidates returned as elected at the first balloting of September 23, 87 were returned as elected by majorities of less than 1,000 votes, while of the 147 Monarchists returned as elected on the same day, only 48 were returned as elected by majorities of less than 1,000 votes. Of the 164 Republicans, 20, or about one in eight, were returned as elected by majorities of less than 200 votes; while of the 147 Monarchists, only 11, or about one in thirteen, were returned as elected by similar majorities. When we remember that the machinery of these elections was absolutely controlled by the prefects under instructions from M. Constans, the Minister of the Interior, which were not made public,this circumstance is certainly very significant. Some of the details sent me by my analytical correspondent make it still more significant. In the 2nd District of St.-Nazaire, for example, the Monarchist candidate was elected without a competitor, receiving 16,084 votes. In the 1st District of St.-Nazaire the Government candidate was returned by a majority of no more than 6 votes, the returns giving him 8,458 votes to 8,452 for his Monarchist opponent. This margin is almost as suggestive as the majority of 9 votes by which M. Razimbaud, a Government candidate for the district of St.-Pars, in the Department of the Hérault, was declared three days after the balloting of October 6 to have been returned over his Monarchist opponent, the Baron André Reille. In this same Department of the Hérault, the Prefect and the Councillors-General returned M. Ménard-Dorian, the Government candidate, as elected, at Lodève, over M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the distinguished political economist, by a majority of 67 votes. In this case it seems a certain number of votes thrown in one commune for both candidates were set aside, to be annulled for informality. When the returns went up to the Council for revision, the informal votes cast for M. Leroy-Beaulieu were declared invalid, the informal votes cast for M. Ménard-Dorian were declared good and valid, and M. Ménard-Dorian was proclaimed to have been elected. The Committee of the Chamber reported against the seating of M. Ménard-Dorian, and tried to have this report accepted, but as I write the Chamber has not accepted it, and the odds are that M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who, though a Moderate Republican, has made himself obnoxious to the Government by telling the truth about the financial condition of France, will be kept out of the seat which it is tolerably plain that he was elected to fill.
It is difficult for an Englishman, even for an American, to understand the cynical coolness with which things of this sort are done in the French Republic of the present time, and not very easy to understand the apathetic way in which, when done, they are accepted by the French public. There seems to be little doubt that in England of late years ballot-boxes have been 'stuffed' only by the stupidity of the voters, and not by the ingenious rascality of the political managers. I wish I could with an easy conscience say the same thing of my own country. But even in the United States deliberate tampering with the returns of a political election has not, I think, been practised since the evil days of Reconstruction at the South with the calm disregard of appearances shown by the Government managers during the legislative contest of this year, 1889, in France; and certainly there has been nothing known in the Congress of the United States, since the days of Reconstruction, at all comparable with the systematic invalidation by the majority in the French Chamber of the elections of troublesome members since it assembled on November 12. In the cases of General Boulanger and of M. Naquet, the latter of whom resigned his seat in the Senate to stand as a Boulangist candidate for the Chamber, this invalidation was carried out openly as a party measure and precisely in the spirit of the famous or infamous resolution which Robespierre made the 'Section of the Pikes' adopt, to the effect that the electors of Paris must be protected against their own incapacity to choose 'true patriots' by having the 'true patriots' chosen for them. If this be one of the 'principles of 1789,' it must be admitted that the Third Republic is consistently and courageously acting upon it. It has undoubted advantages, but it has a tendency, perhaps, to put in question the value of what arecommonly called representative institutions. Strike out of the theory of representative institutions the right divine of the people to choose the wrong men, and what is left of it?
At the close of the election of September 22, 1889, in Paris, the major of the 2nd or Clignancourt District of the eighteenth arrondissement of the Department of the Seine declared that General Boulanger had received 7,816 votes out of 13,611 cast, and that he was therefore elected. Of his competitors, one M. Joffrin, described as a 'Possibilist,' had received 5,507 votes; M. Jules Roques, a Socialist, had received 359 votes, and for a citizen bearing the gloomy but respectable name of M. Cercueil, or 'M. Coffin,' one vote had been cast. Obviously General Boulanger was the man whom a majority of the voters of Clignancourt desired to represent them. If General Boulanger for their own sake could not be allowed to represent them, why not M. Cercueil? They certainly did not choose M. Cercueil to represent them. But as certainly they did not choose M. Joffrin to represent them.
What really happened? The Prefect of the Seine, on hearing the result at Clignancourt, notified the Minister of the Interior, and orders were at once given to correct this egregious error into which the voters of Clignancourt had fallen as to what their true interest required. It was probably found that an 'informality' had occurred in certain communes, and that through this 2,494 votes must be annulled. News of this discovery was instantly sent to the Parisian newspapers. As it was supposed that they would give M. Joffrin a plurality of the votes to be recognised, sundry newspapers actually printed the name of M. Joffrin at the head of the list of candidates in the place usually accorded by a really enlightened press to the elect ofuniversal suffrage. Unfortunately the official calculator is not of the blood of Bidder. It was found at the last moment that enough votes had not been 'annulled' to put M. Joffrin at the head of the poll, so that his name actually appears in sundry Parisian morning papers of September 23, first indeed in position, but over against it are recorded 5,500 votes, while the name of General Boulanger comes second with 5,880 votes! Clearly an awkwardness! In theJournal des Débats, which is a serious Republican journal of character, the election of General Boulanger by 7,816 votes was quietly announced, with a postscript to the effect that 'the Prefecture of the Seine' gave a different result, 'arising from the circumstance that in certain sections 2,494 votes bearing the name of General Boulanger had been asserted to be null and void,' and that, therefore, there would be a second election, or 'ballottage,' on October 6!
There could hardly be a more pregnant commentary than this upon the candid admission made by the most respectable and influential Republican journal in Paris, theTemps, on October 17, 1885, that these 'second elections,' or 'ballottages,' are simply a device by which the Central Government at Paris is enabled to 'correct' the errors perpetrated by the voters of France at the elections which precede them. 'To learn the true sentiments of the country,' said theTemps, 'we must consult the elections of the 4th. On that dayuniversal suffrage was allowedto choose freely between the opposing parties and policies. The vote of to-morrow will not be as clear and precise, for it will be determined bytactical necessities and by all sorts of combinations.'
Perfectly true! But, this being true, what becomes of 'popular sovereignty' and of the divine quality of the rights derived from universal suffrage as contrasted with rights derived from inheritance, or, for that matter,with rights derived from a dice-box or the shuffling of a pack of cards? Considering what the usual origin is of 'tactical necessities' in politics, and what forces determine political 'combinations of all sorts,' is it going too far to say that the odds, so far as public interests are concerned, are in favour of the dice-box or the pack of cards—provided the dice be not loaded or the cards specially packed?
Some years ago, in my own country, a well-known Austrian dined with me one night, just before he sailed for Europe after a tour in the United States. We spoke of a public man just then filling a very responsible position at Washington, to which he had been named after a severely contested and very costly election. 'I thought him a very pleasant, intelligent man,' said my Austrian guest, 'but it struck me that you spend too much time and trouble and money on getting just such men into such places. We get very much the same calibre of men for the same kind of work much more economically and easily by the simple process of marrying a prince to a princess.'
What I have seen and learned this year of the working of the electoral machinery in France under the Third Republic inclines me, as I have already said, to think that the Catholic children of light in Lille and in French Flanders generally may be doing better work both for Religion and for Liberty than my pessimistic journalist was disposed before the elections to believe. If they had given more time and thought and money to 'tactical necessities' and 'political combinations,' and less to the social and spiritual interests of the land in which they live, the results even of the elections might perhaps have been less satisfactory to them. For, as I have shown, the strength of the Monarchist vote in this region proved to be much greater than my pessimistthought it would be; and the Republicans of the Third Republic did a deal of canvassing for the Monarchists by making it very hard for men who love religion and liberty to vote for Republican candidates.
Lord Beaconsfield's saying, that the world is governed by the people of whom it hears the least, is certainly not less true of the Catholic Church than it is of the world. The Catholic stock in French Flanders is as vigorous and full of sap as in Belgium or in Holland. It is interesting to hear educated people talking glibly in London or Paris about the decay of the Christian religion in the same breath in which they profess their unbounded admiration of the heroism of Father Damien. It was through no act or wish of Father Damien that the world at large came to know his name, or to take account of a work which was done not to be seen of men. He was simply a Flemish Catholic, doing what he believed to be the will of God.
Throughout the broad rich plains of the great Department of the Nord, and in its crowded busy towns and cities, this Catholic faith is everywhere to be seen and felt—to be felt rather than to be seen in its fruits of charity, self-denial, and devout self-sacrifice.
Nowhere in France is public charity, I am told, so extensively and efficiently organised, and the demands upon public charity are exceptionally great. The department is very rich and very prosperous, but it contains, like all frontier regions, a large floating population; and one of the best-informed men I met in Lille, a large landed proprietor in one of the wealthiest communes of the department, told me that there are probably more families or tribes of hereditary mendicants scattered over French Flanders than are to be found in any other French province.
These are not nomads addicted to wandering off intoother regions, but rather a kind of Northern lazzaroni. They do a little work occasionally, but as little and as seldom as possible. They are inveterate poachers, and the more industrious of them are habitual smugglers. In their way of prosecuting this industry, however, they show their fine natural instinct for avoiding labour. The most profitable trade they drive is in tobacco. This they get over the frontier from Belgium, and to get it they train a certain breed of dogs. They tie parcels of tobacco around the throats of these dogs, and then proceed to have the dogs well thrashed by one of their number dressed in the Custom-house uniform. A few lessons of this sort suffice to develop in the dogs a strong association of ideas between the odour of tobacco and the thwacks of a cudgel, and a dog well educated in this way may be trusted, after he has got his cargo in Belgium, to reach his master's den unvisited by the Frenchdouane. Baudrillart confirms this account. He puts the number of habitual applicants, largely from this mendicant class, for public relief in the department at from two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand a year. Out of the 662 communes in the department there were only twenty in 1888 without a 'Bureau de Bienfaisance,' and the department spends five millions of francs a year on its charities, independently of nearly twice that amount expended upon hospitals, asylums, dispensaries, and the like, by private benevolence. Under the French law, private donors can found charities to be attached to the public 'Bureau de Bienfaisance,' and administered by the public officers, and one of the many evil effects of the war declared against Catholic France by the Third Republic is that it affects such charities very seriously.
Even under the Empire trouble came of the occasional division of one commune into two or morecommunes, a question then arising as, for example, in a famous case of the communes of St.-Joseph and St.-Martin in the Loire, about the division between the poor of the two communes of three hospital beds left to the 'Bureau de Bienfaisance' of the original commune of St.-Martin. It was easier for the military saint himself to divide his cloak with the shivering beggar than for the commune which bore his name to divide three beds into two equal portions! At Lille, two or three years ago, a lady, Mme. Austin Laurand, the widow of M. Laurand, in accordance with her husband's will, gave 30,000 francs to the 'Bureau de Bienfaisance' of the city, the income thereof to be applied, under the supervision of three commissioners, to encouraging habits of thrift among the apprentices of Lille. Two hundred bank-books of five francs each are annually given to apprentices in the first two years of their apprenticeship, and the rest of the income is to be given in prizes each year to those of the bank-book holders who shall be shown to have been the most careful and thrifty in managing the results of their labour during the year.
A law passed in 1874, before the 'true Republicans' of Gambetta and Ferry came into power, provides for a medical inspection and record of newly-born children, and this law puts infants, whenever it may be found necessary, under proper hygienic conditions. It has been nowhere so energetically carried out as in the Nord. Of course, such a law as this flies directly in the face of the great gospel of the 'survival of the fittest.' But though that gospel was introduced to Paris on the stage as one of the curiosities of the Centennial Exposition of 1889, it has made little progress as yet in Catholic France. Even at the theatres in Paris, I am glad to say, the popular instinct still regulates thequeueon principles quite inconsistent with the Darwinian maxims of 'every man for himself,' and 'the devil take the hindmost.' It will be an evil day for invalids and cripples bitten with the drama when the 'struggle for life' comes to be logically developed into the right of the strongest men to get first to the ticket office!
Throughout the Department of the Nord, primary schools exist for the children who are taken in charge at their birth by public benevolence, and those to whom they are confided are obliged to see that the children attend these schools from the age of six to the age of twelve years.
Under the influence of the Church acting upon the naturally sociable and gregarious temperament of the Flemish race, mutual aid societies have become very numerous of late years in the Nord. A hundred and fifty-two such societies now exist in the arrondissement of Lille alone. These numbered, in 1888, 7,249 honorary members and 35,270 paying members, and their assets were stated at about 3,000,000 francs. Only 3,649 women, however, were enrolled on their lists. Is this a confirmation, I wonder, of the theory entertained by Mr. Emerson and other philosophers, that woman is not a 'clubbable' animal?
Putting this aside, however, for the moment as a more or less 'academic' question, it is of interest to note the very considerable development during the last few years of the principle of association among the working-men and producers of France, under the influence of the Church and of Conservative public men like M. Welche, one of the extra-parliamentary Ministers of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta, who did good service here at Lille as Prefect of the Department of the Nord, and who has made the French law of 1881 affecting 'professionalsyndicates,' so useful throughout the agricultural world of France.
It is one of the organic statutes of the Society of 'Foreseers of the Future,' or 'Prévoyants de l'Avenir,' that all political and religious discussions are forbidden at the meetings of the society.'
This society was established at Paris on December 12, 1880. On February 23, 1881, it was authorised to act as a 'Civil Society,' by the Minister of the Interior and the Prefect of Police. Its object is to 'ensure to all its members who shall have co-operated in maintaining it for twenty years, the first necessaries of life.' I shall not attempt here to go in detail into the statutes and organisation of the society. Suffice it to say that the statutes are brief, clear, and sensible, and that the organisation appears to be eminently practical. The members, to the number of whom no limit is set, the only indispensable condition being that they shall be in good health and actively employed in some trade or calling, pay an entrance fee of two francs, and a monthly due of one franc. This monthly due must be paid in advance, and a fine of 25 centimes is imposed for every month in arrears. Each member receives a book containing the statutes, which establishes his title to its benefits, and for which he pays 50 centimes. Donations may be received, and under the authority of the officers entertainments may be given, the profits of which go to the general fund. Any respectable person, no matter what may be his calling, may become a member, if he has attained the age of fifteen years, and women are not excluded. 'Having the same duties,' say the statutes, 'they have the same rights,' but, despite this, it is provided that women who are members shall not be fined if they fail to attend the general meeting on the second Sunday in January in each year, whereasmen in the same case shall be mulcted in the sum of one franc, unless they shall have previously by letter excused themselves.
Every member at the expiration of twenty full years of membership shall be entitled to his share of the interest earned during the twentieth year of his membership by the property of the society, the funds of which can only be invested in the three or five per cent. funds of the French nation. His regular contribution to the society will still go on, but he will receive his share of the interest earned thereafter regularly every three months. Should a pensioner die, the year's interest due to him shall be paid over to his heirs or assigns. The pension cannot be transferred or alienated, and the relations of a pensioner have no claim upon the amount of the payments made by him to the society. Should a member become an invalid, incapable of work, after fully paying up his dues to the society during five years, he may demand to be kept upon the books as a full member, and as such he will be entitled to his pension at the end of twenty years. The society can only be dissolved by a unanimous vote of the members at a general meeting; and if so dissolved the members must choose another society as nearly as possible resembling this, to which the property of the dissolved society shall be transferred.
The funds for current expenses of the society can never exceed 1,500 francs. This society, as I have said, was founded in 1880. Its success has been really phenomenal.
On January 1, 1882, it comprised 757 members, and its capital amounted to 6,237 francs. On January 18, 1886, it consisted of 15,008 members, and had a capital invested in French consols of 361,003 fr. 99 c. On April 1, 1889, it numbered 59,932 members, dividedinto 340 sections, and it possessed an invested capital of 1,541,868 fr. 26 c.! Of course the Tontine principle enters into the system, and it would be interesting to compute the probable pensions in 1902 of so many of the 757 persons who were members of the society in 1882 as may then be living to claim their share of the interest then earned by the then capital of the society. The minuteness, precision, and practical common sense with which the statutes of this organisation have been drawn up and provision made in its regulations against all the probable difficulties to be encountered in carrying it on, gives one a very favourable notion of the business capacity and of the character of the French working classes. No conditions as to sex or nationality are imposed upon membership, the only necessary qualification being that the person applying to be admitted shall be actively employed in some way, be domiciled in France, and be sixteen full years of age. It strikes me that organisations of this sort are more likely to promote a practical solution of the Labour question than combinations to secure the passage of laws fixing the number of hours for which a man shall be allowed to work.
The Church has taken an active part in fostering the development of these mutual aid societies throughout this great department, and particularly in Lille and Roubaix. The disasters of the Franco-German war gave a great impulse to them. These disasters did more to strengthen and deepen than all the vulgar violence of the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-literary atheism of parliamentary Paris has yet done to weaken the religious sentiment in France, and the French Catholics cannot be cited to illustrate Aubrey de Vere's noble saying that 'worse than wasted weal is wasted woe.'
I spent a most interesting morning at Lille with M. Grimbert in visiting the buildings and the collections of the great Catholic University which has been founded here to meet the assault of M. Ferry and his allies on the higher education in France. This Catholic University has been endowed and is maintained entirely by the private liberality of the Catholics of the Department of the Nord, and by the revenues it derives from the students who attend its courses. It is a thoroughly equipped university of the first rank. The Rector, Monseigneur Baunard, is a Roman prelate, and of the two vice-rectors, one is a prelate and the other a canon. These, with the Deans of the Faculties, and five professors elected from the corps of instructors, constitute the Academic Senate. The Administrative Council comprises the Archbishop of Cambrai, the Bishop of Arras (to the benevolence of one of whose predecessors France is indebted for the education which enabled Robespierre to avenge upon the Church and upon his country what in one of his letters he calls 'the intolerable slavery of an obligation received'), the Bishop of Lydda, the Chancellor of the University, and the Rector. The Theological Faculty comprises a dean and nine professors; the Law Faculty a dean, the Comte de Vareilles-Sommières, and thirteen professors. One of these gentlemen, M. Arthaut, was so kind as to receive M. Grimbert and myself, and to show us over the whole institution. The Medical Faculty comprises a dean, Dr. Desplats, and twenty-three professors; the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, a dean, Dr. Margerie, and seven professors; the Faculty of Sciences, a dean, Dr. Chautard, and nine professors.
The buildings of the University now occupy two sides of an immense square in one of the finest quarters of Lille, and when fully completed will occupy thewhole square. As they now stand they are by far the most striking edifices in Lille, and would do honour to any city in Europe. The area covered by them, I should say, is larger than that covered by the University of London, and certainly, from the architectural point of view, they need fear no comparison with the London establishment. The library, which is admirably arranged, already contains about 80,000 volumes, and the apparatus of the scientific schools is admittedly better than that of any institution in France. The outlay already made here exceeds 11,000,000 fr., or about 240,000l.sterling, all of which has been contributed freely by the Catholics of this region.
On the face of things it appears to me that the existence of this University is somewhat inconsistent with the notion that 'the religious sentiment is dead in France.' The classes are now attended by between four and five hundred students, for whose accommodation three 'family houses' have been already built, in which students are lodged at an expense of from 1,000 to 1,400 fr. a year, and when the academic buildings now in process of construction are completed, more than a thousand students can be thus lodged. Two dispensaries, a Maternity Hospital, under the charge of Sisters of Charity of St.-Vincent de Paul, together with the large Hospital de la Charité, are directly connected with the clinical service of the medical faculty, and are so administered as to render the most important services to the industrious population of the city. The Electrical Department of the Faculty of Sciences is particularly well equipped, and one of the assistants in charge of this department, who showed us some improvements recently devised here in the working apparatus, surprised me by the extent and minute accuracy of his information as to all the most recentprogress made in the applications of electricity to machinery, and to the arts on both sides of the Atlantic.
I was not surprised, however, to learn from M. Arthaut that the astonishing prosperity of this great institution is viewed with extreme dissatisfaction by the authorities at Paris, and particularly by the University of France, which has been confirmed again under the Third Republic in the monopoly of academic privileges, of which it was very sensibly deprived by the Assembly under the Government of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta. By way of expressing this dissatisfaction with dignity and emphasis, the Government of the Third Republic actually forbids free Catholic universities to use the title of universities. M. Ferry's Article 7 not being yet law in this best of all possible French Republics, Catholics cannot be prevented from spending their own money in founding institutions which are really universities. But, at all events, they can be forbidden to give any one of them the title of a university, that being reserved for the State establishment, which, from Paris, extends its academic sway all over France.
I called the attention of M. Arthaut to the fact that a great Catholic University has been this year founded in the capital of the Republic of the United States, and that the President of the Republic, himself a Protestant, not only attended the ceremonies of the foundation, but made a brief speech, in which he expressed his best wishes for its progress and prosperity. 'That, I am afraid,' said M. Arthaut, 'is a kind of republic which we are not likely to see established in France.'
To measure the significance of this Catholic work in behalf of liberty and religion here at Lille, it must be borne in mind that the very men who are building itup with such splendid liberality and enterprise are compelled by the iniquitous laws of the Third Republic to bear their own share as taxpayers in supporting here at Lille another academic institution of a similar scope, but of less importance, under the direct control of the University of France, from all share in the administration of which religion and the ministers of religion are as rigidly excluded as that refugee of the First French Revolution, Stephen Girard, intended they should be from the college which he founded at Philadelphia. Of course the same thing is true of the Catholics all over France. Out of their pockets must come nine-tenths of the enormous sum, as yet quite incalculable, but certainly running far up in the hundreds of millions of francs which is still to be expended by the Third Republic upon its 'scholastic palace,' and the ever-increasing army of 'lay teachers,' male and female, whom it is yearly turning out of the educational institutions of France to seek the employment which a vast majority of them cannot possibly hope to find in the public schools, the lyceums and 'faculties' of the nation.
On this point a Councillor-General whom I met here at Lille dwelt with very grave emphasis. 'We are educating here in France,' he said to me, 'hundreds of young men and young women every year under false pretences to enter a profession already overcrowded. For every post which now exists or which can be created within the next ten years in the educational system of these revolutionists at Paris, we are turning out at least a hundred applicants each year of each sex, who must necessarily be thrown upon the public. What will become of them? The young men will go into Nihilism, as young men of the same sort do in Russia; the young women will go upon the street.Only the other day at Paris, the Government advertised a competition for about 70 positions in the telegraphic service. How many young women applied? More than 800! What is to become of the 730 unsuccessful competitors? And what right has the State to flood the market thus, in advance of the necessities of the country, and at the cost of the taxpayers, with male and female teachers, any more than with carpenters, or with surgeons, or with confectioners?'
One circumstance connected with the development of this great Catholic University at Lille (as an American I permit myself to give the institution its proper title) is of special significance. It is not the only institution of the kind which has been called into existence in France since the Third Republic began its war against religion in 1880. There is a Free Catholic institution at Lyons, which consists of three faculties under the administration of a company founded to receive and administer all sums given or bequeathed to organise the institutes. The Archbishop of Lyons is Chancellor of this institution, which has a dean and seven professors of theology, a dean and eighteen professors of law, with a secretary and librarian of that faculty, a dean and seven professors of letters, a dean and nine professors of science. There are similar institutions also at Angers and at Toulouse. All of these are freely supported by the private subscriptions of Catholic France, as is also the great Catholic Institute of Paris in the Rue Vaugirard, so admirably conducted by Monseigneur d'Hulst, the Vicar-General of Paris. Thanks to the law of July 12, 1875, and to the stand made by the friends of liberty and religion when the law of March 18, 1880, was finally enacted, the students of the Faculty of Law in these Catholic institutes still have the right to present themselves with the certificates of their several institutes at the public examinations for the diplomas of the baccalaureate, the licentiate and the doctorate in law, and for the certificate of capacity in the law, necessary to enable the successful candidates to practise the legal profession in France. To maintain the efficiency of the free Catholic institutions, the Catholics of France have spared during the last few years neither labour nor money. More than 17,000,000 francs have been contributed during that period to establish the Catholic educational system in Paris alone, and more than 2,000,000 francs are yearly subscribed there to keep it up. As I have already said, the University here at Lille represents an expenditure during the same period of more than 11,000,000 francs and a still larger prospective expenditure.
It would be interesting, if it were possible, to learn how much out of their own pockets the propagandists of unbelief have expended during this same decade upon the irreligious education of the children of their countrymen! Were the truth attainable, the amount expended by them would be found to bear to the amount received by them from their propaganda of unbelief much less than the proportion of Falstaff's 'pennyworth of bread' to his 'intolerable deal of sack!' While the Catholics of France have been giving millions to defend the right of the French people to protect the faith of their children, these men have been expending hundreds of millions of the money of Catholic taxpayers upon school buildings, the contracts for erecting which have been controlled by themselves for their friends; they have been finding places in the public educational service for their friends, dependants and allies, and they have been comfortably drawing large salaries themselves from the Treasury.
Set over against these incontrovertible facts, thefact, as incontrovertible, for which I am indebted here to M. Grimbert, that of the millions expended in defence of liberty and religion here at Lille, a very large proportion has been contributed by one single Catholic citizen of this ancient Flemish city, who has consecrated his life and his fortune to his faith in the spirit of the earliest Christian times, and I think my readers will agree with me, not only that the religious sentiment is not dead in France, but that it never was more living and more active in France, nor more full of promise for the social and political regeneration of this great people.
I shall not run the risk of offending this good Catholic by naming him, though his name and his work are an open secret for every intelligent person in Lille. Suffice it that, coming of an old Flemish stock and bearing an old Flemish name, this citizen (the title of citizen means something respectable in these staunch old free cities) of Lille years ago insisted to his brother, who was his associate in the ownership and management of one of the largest commercial houses of this region, that they should take regularly into the partnership account of their business, for one-third of their annual profits, 'the work of God.' This was done; and from that day to this the proportion thus set apart of their profits has been regularly devoted to the service of the Church and of charity. But this is not all. The brother, of whom I speak with the reticence and the reverence due to a type of character not absolutely common in this age of the Golden Calf, has systematically limited his own personal expenses during the whole of these years to a few thousands of francs, devoting all the rest of his income to religious and benevolent objects.
I should really like to see a calm business-like estimate made of the economical advantages likely to result to a country from extinguishing at an expense of several hundreds of millions of francs a year the faith which gives birth to characters such as this.
I visited, in one of the suburbs of Lille, the extensive manufactories of another well-known house, the heads of which have worked out and established an excellent system of 'mutual assistance' among their employees, and built up a large and well-orderedcité ouvrièreon a plan substantially resembling that of those which I saw at St.-Gobain and at Anzin. A house for young girls established by this firm, very near their main factory, struck me as particularly admirable. It is under the management of the Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul, who fill the place with a pervading spirit of cheerfulness and animation, quite indescribable. The dormitories were the perfection of neatness. The gymnastic hall and the grounds were in apple-pie order, and as the lower part of the large and airy building erected by the firm for this domicile is used during the day as a kind of crèche by the married women who leave their young children here while they are busy in the factory, the whole place was alive with merry and laughing little imps. I heard of other establishments of the same kind at and near Roubaix on a still larger scale. These I unfortunately had not time to visit. Under the Empire in 1865 a few energetic citizens of Lille induced the municipality to guarantee five per cent, interest on a capital of 2,000,000 francs for the establishment of a company to construct, let and sell houses for working-men under certain conditions as to the isolation of each house and as to its proper ventilation and drainage. The rental of these houses can never exceed eight per cent, on the cost of erection, those of one story never to cost more than 2,400 francs, and those of two stories more than 3,000 francs,including the cost of the land. The houses are built of brick with foundations and sills of Soignies stone. These were the original statutes, but the company is now allowed to build single-story houses on a larger scale with cellars, which may be rented for 400 francs a year or bought for 5,000 francs—a first payment in the case of purchase to be made of 500 francs, and after that the money to be paid in instalments of 40 francs a month over thirteen years. All the wells and pumps are supplied by the municipality.
The municipality also makes an annual grant in aid of a very useful charity, founded under the Empire, and largely developed by private gifts and legacies, called the 'Invalids of Labour.' This now secures pensions to nearly a hundred workmen, disabled by serious accidents incurred in their labour or through some effort to help others in peril. It also gives temporary assistance in less severe cases. But the most characteristic institution which I found flourishing at Lille has a history worth telling. It strikingly illustrates the development under the oldrégimein France and Flanders of those public works of benevolence of which we are so often and so audaciously asked to believe that they had no existence before the benign 'principles of 1789' bedewed the hearts of men, and it not less strikingly illustrates the demoralising and destructive influence upon all manner of sound and useful establishments throughout France of the headlong and reckless administration of public affairs by the successive 'governments' of the First Republic.
In the year 1607, on September 27, a worthy Catholic citizen, Bartholomew Masurel,bourgeois et manantof the city of Lille, came before two notaries, and declared 'that to succour the poor people of Lille in their necessities, and also for the salvation of his ownsoul and the souls of his predecessors and successors, he wished to establish aMont-de-Piété, where money loans should be made without usury or interest, and not as they were made by the Lombards.'
To this end Bartholomew Masurel gave, by a donation between living persons, and irrevocable, to take effect after his death, all his lands, fiefs, and houses which he owned at Lille, and in his country place, and the value of which might be estimated at a hundred and fifty thousandlivres parisis, or in money of our day nominally 300,000 francs. In fact, the gift, I am told, represented about half a million francs of our days.
But the good 'bourgeois et manant' could not hold out till his death against the appeal which the sight of 'the poor people of Lille in their necessities' daily made to his kindly heart. So in 1609 he agreed with the Mayor, that he would turn over all these possessions at once to the magistrates to be applied to the purpose he meant to effect, the magistrates agreeing to secure to him an annuity out of the funds of the city of 1,200 florins, or about 1,562 francs of our time. Thereupon he went to work with the authorities to found his charity. From his statutes we learn that foundations of this kind were then common in French Flanders. He models them, as he says, upon 'those of similar foundations in our neighbouring towns and elsewhere.'
No loans were to be made except to 'manants et habitants de la Ville Taille et Banlieue de Lille,' and only to 'poor and necessitous persons who, not being able to gain their livelihood, were forced to borrow money;' nor were loans to be made to 'persons prodigal, of evil life, and accustomed to squander their goods.' For this due order was to be taken by the magistrates. At first the loans were limited to 24 florins (30 francs) to one person; the lowest sum loaned being 20 patars, or 1 fr.25 c. of our times. So well had Bartholomew Masurel organised his charity, and so many good Christian souls swelled its funds by gifts and bequests, that within a year the maximum loan was raised to 50 florins, in 1669 to 100 florins, and in 1745 it was fixed at 120 florins, or 150 francs. At this figure it stood when the First Republic began its experiments. The fund was then known as 'the true Mont-de-Piété,' and was carried on under letters patent granted in 1609 by the Archduke Albert of Austria. When Lille became French in 1667, Louis XIV had to recognise and confirm all the rights and titles of this benevolent institution.
It had rendered great service to the industries of Lille during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of the funds enabling the managers to lend sums to weavers on their goods when trade fell off, and so relieving them from the necessity of parting with them for less than their value. Just before the Revolution the Masurel Fund amounted to 455,454 francs, of which 256,627 francs were in cash or in loans, and the rest in state funds and houses, yielding a revenue of 8,307 francs.
On January 23, 1794, the National Convention coolly ordered that all 'objects of necessity deposited in any Mont-de-Piété for an amount not exceeding 20 francs should be at once restored without payment to their owners, and all such objects deposited for amounts below 50 and above 20 francs on payment, without interest, of the amount beyond 20 francs!'
This 'liberal' legislation had been preceded on August 24, 1793, by another act of spoliation which ordered 'the payment of the capital of all sums at interest to be made inassignats, and the conversion of all the debts of the Communes, and of the suppressed public organisations throughout France into State debts.
In consequence of these measures the whole property of the Masurel fund was found in 1803, when Napoleon began to overhaul the chaos to which the lunatics and plunderers of the Republic had reduced France, to amount to no more than 10,408 francs in real estate. This was the way in which the 'principles of 1789' developed the benevolent institutions of France, and introduced a new era!
The authorities of Lille had the good sense and forecast thereupon to suspend the operations of the trueMont-de-Piété, and to set about restoring the fund as far and as fast as was possible. The Christian institution of Masurel had fared better than the 'Lombards.' This latter establishment had to be formally closed in 1796, as it was then found to have no more than 86,000 francs in its treasury, and this inassignats!
In 1857 the Prefect of the Nord reported that the Masurel fund might be safely devoted anew to the purposes of its founder. It then amounted to 249,644 fr. By an imperial decree of 1860, all that remained of the property of the 'Lombards' was amalgamated with the Masurel fund, and the institution was put under the direction of the official Mont-de-Piété of Lille, but with a separate system of accounts, and began its operations again on the lines laid down by its founder in 1607. It has since worked so well that the maximum of the loans reimbursable, without interest, has risen from 30 francs in 1860 to 200 francs.
In 1869, the maximum being 100 francs, the number of engagements and renewals was 10,933—the money loaned amounted to 75,460 fr. 50 c., in loans averaging 9fr. 14 c., and the capital of the fund to 257,231 fr. 27 c. In 1888, the maximum being 200 fr., there were 16,000 engagements and renewals, the loans amounted to136,663 francs in average loans of 8 fr. 54 c., and the capital of the fund to 334,726 fr. 57 c.
Of the 'similar foundations in other towns' which moved the pious emulation of Bartholomew Masurel nearly three centuries ago, how many, I wonder, still exist!
And with them how many other monuments of the Christian civilisation of Flanders and of France were 'improved' off the face of the earth by the 'regenerators' of 1792?
It was not by accident that I learned of the Masurel Mont-de-Piété; but when I went to the Municipal Secretary to ask him for some official account of its condition and its operation, that courteous functionary looked at me for a moment with astonishment and then said, 'I am delighted to give you what you want, and I assure you that, with one exception, you are the only foreigner who has ever asked for this information in the last seven years! The other was the English Protestant clergyman here in Lille, who happens to live or has his chapel, I am not sure which, just opposite the Mont-de-Piété!'
I ought not to speak however of the Masurel foundation as 'unique.' I hope there may be many more men like the good Bartholomew Masurel in our time, and in other countries besides France, than we wot of. But the only modern institution of a kindred spirit with this of which I have any present cognisance began its career in England only fifteen years ago, and was founded curiously enough like the Masurel fund by men of the Low Countries. This is the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' of the Netherlands Benevolent Society of London. At a dinner given at the Cannon Street Hotel on May 12, 1874, to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the accession of King William III under the presidency of theDutch Minister in England, the Count de Bylandt, the guests in a glow of loyalty and good-fellowship proposed to raise a contribution to be spent in the purchase of some handsome memorial of the occasion. A happy inspiration came to the Chairman, and he suggested to his countrymen that the best of all possible memorials of such an occasion would be to establish a fund for the relief of poor and worthy Netherlanders in London and to give it the name of their King. The suggestion was adopted by acclamation, and the result the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' from which, as I find by examining its statutes and its records, gratuitous loans, precisely identical in their object and under conditions not essentially different, are made to deserving Hollanders in London.
The 'fonds' is connected with a society doing the usual work of all such foreign benevolent societies in London. But it is a special fund, and as I learn from the Annual Report of the Society for January 1889, it has so far been administered with entire success, and with the result of enabling not a few honest and industrious Hollanders stranded in London to make a fair and prosperous start in life. That the fund is administered in the true practical spirit of the old Low Country benevolence, and its advantages appreciated as they ought to be, appears from the statement made by the Treasurer, Mr. Maas, in the Report for 1889, that the number of loans is increasing and the number of donations decreasing. In 1888 371l.were loaned as against 185l.in 1887, and 247l.given away as against 382l.in 1887. I observe, too, that the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Polydore de Keyser, gave at this annual meeting as his reason for joining the society which administers this fund that it had the courage to spend 251l.in excess of its assured income rather than send away the good which came to its door to be done.
Reims
No city in France has more to lose and less to gain from the triumph of the Third Republic over historic France than this ancient, rich, and royal city of Reims.
The triumph of the Third Republic on the lines laid down by M. Challemel-Lacour in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of all its significance. It would be to filch from the city of St.-Rémi and of Clovis, of Urban II. and of Jeanne d'Arc, its great name—a robbery that surely would not enrich the Third Republic, but that would leave Reims poor indeed!
Of course it is possible that the laicised, unbaptized, and atheistic French citizen of the future may come to regard the hegira of M. Gambetta from Paris to Tours in a balloon, and the occupation of Tonkin, as events of greater importance to mankind than the creation of France by Clotilde and Clovis, or the rescue of France from conquest and dismemberment by the pious peasant-girl of Domrémy, or the rolling back of Islam from the domination of the world by Urban II. Heaven forbid that I should assume to set any limit to the things which a truly scientific unbeliever is likely to believe!
But while men still abide in the thick darkness of the Catholic faith, or even in the penumbral twilight ofProtestant Christianity, I do not see how Reims is to be one bit the better, materially or morally, for the extinction of the religious sentiment in France.
The arrondissement of Reims contains very nearly 200,000 people, of whom considerably more than one-third inhabit the city itself. A very large proportion of these are employed in the numerous factories which flourish here, and many more in the various industries connected with the incessantly growing commerce in those sparkling wines which have made the name of this ancient province synonymous with luxury and gaiety in the remotest corners of the world. Though Épernay is the real headquarters of this commerce, two or three of the most important houses connected with it are, and long have been, established at Reims, and some of the most remarkable of the vast cellars excavated in the chalk, in which these sparkling wines are stored throughout the Department of the Marne, are here to be seen. Here too, at least as well as at Épernay or Châlons, acquaintance may be made, at the right time and in the right places, with certain vintages of Champagne which seldom or never find their way into the channels of trade, not so much because of their rarity and high cost as because of their exceeding delicacy. It is almost impossible, for example, to find even at Paris the finest quality of the redvin de caveof Bouzy. This is illustrated by the fact that the only samples of this exquisite wine sent to Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1889 were those sent by Bouché Fils at Mareuil-sur-Ay, and these represented only three vintages, the earliest being that of 1884. The daintily aromatic bouquet of this wine is seldom unaffected even by the short railway journey to the capital. Of course I know that by speaking of this or of any other still wine of Champagne, I put myself under the ban of Mr. Canning'sfamous declaration, so often cited by Lord Beaconsfield, that 'the man who says he likes still champagne will say anything.' Nevertheless what I have written, I have written—and I shall not take it back. This the less, that I cannot allow myself even to enter upon this theme of the vineyards of the chalky Marne and the cellars of Champagne. Were I to do this, I should have a tale to unfold, much too long, and involving too many points of controversy with the accepted gastronomic authorities in my own country, in England, and in Russia, to be brought within the compass of this volume. Suffice it that the great wine-growers of Champagne do not seem to me to be infidels, or to neglect the due provision of their own households in their philanthropic anxiety to promote the convivial happiness of the four quarters of the globe. The extent to which the syndication of vineyards for the production of the wines most in demand in one or another part of the world, has been developed of late years in Champagne is a noteworthy phenomenon. Not less noteworthy is the growing attention paid throughout this Department of the Marne of late years to scientific methods in agriculture, and the steady improvement in the condition of the rural population.
Whether a similar improvement can be shown in the general condition of the urban population is not so clear as might be wished. That within certain limits such an improvement has taken place, is however undeniable; and this is of great interest, because it is distinctly due to the energy and decision with which the challenge flung down to the Christianity of this historic Christian heart of France has been taken up by the Catholics of Reims.
In the course of a most interesting visit which I made in August to the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims,His Eminence was good enough to put me in the way of measuring for myself the work done among the factory people of this region by a great Christian organization, the centre and pivot of which was established here, but which is mow extending itself all over the country. Most assuredly there is nothing in the story of this work to indicate either the approaching death or the decay of the religious sentiment in France.
This work rests, like all great works, upon certain principles. But these principles were worked out, not through any theoretical inquisition into the possibilities of society, but through a direct personal practical experience of the relations between an employer of labour and his employees. It is known now throughout France as the work of the 'Christian Corporations,' and it includes, as a part of its machinery, the 'Catholic Workmen's Clubs,' which are increasing and multiplying throughout France. Its founder, M. Léon Harmel, is at the head of an important manufactory at the Val-des-Bois near Reims. This manufactory was established here half a century ago by the father of M. Harmel, and the great social work which the son is now doing is the coming to fruit, after many years, of the virtues and the experience of his father. The Ardennes is the northernmost of the four Departments into which the wise men of 1790 divided the ancient province of Champagne, and M. Harmel, the father, had inherited a manufactory in that department. This he gave up to his brother, and removing to the Marne in 1840 he founded here the establishment of the Val-des-Bois. He was a devout and sincere Catholic, and he had lived all his life among a quiet and Catholic population in the Ardennes. He found himself surrounded in his new home by a totally different people. His new employees were amazed when they saw him attending mass at theparish church on Sunday. A few of their wives and daughters went there irregularly, but the men, as a rule, were 'total abstainers.'
M. Harmel made no attempt to preach to his people otherwise than by his example. But the employer being regarded, in the light of modern progress, as the natural enemy of the employee, this example had little effect. M. Léon Harmel tells a delightful story of his father's first success in inducing some of his workmen, with whom he had fallen incidentally into conversation on the subject, to go over to Reims in the early morning at the beginning of Lent, and confess to an excellent priest there who was one of his friends. He spake with the men separately, and said nothing to any one of them of his conversations with the others. Meeting one of his converts on his return, M. Harmel asked him about his experience. 'Ah, sir!' the man replied, 'it is all very well, but I shall never be caught there again!' 'And, pray, why not?' 'Why I thought I was the only man going to confess. I saw no one when I went into the confessional, and the good priest was very good, and I was glad I went. But when I came to commune in the church, there were three of my comrades! How I looked at them, and how they looked at me! It will be all over the factory to-night, and we four will have no peace for six months! No! I shall not do this again!'
The manufactory prospered. If the example of M. Harmel availed little against the public sentiment of the workpeople educated in utter indifference to all religion, in the way of inducing them to attend to their religious duties, his unvarying justice and benevolence, his readiness to succour and to advise them in all straits, and his unobtrusive devotion to his faith, at least exerted a wholesome effect upon their general conduct; and the factory of the Val-des-Bois earned ahigh reputation for its freedom from flagrant scandals and disorders. But this did not satisfy M. Harmel. After twenty years of single-handed and uphill work, he determined to seek help. On February 28, 1861, he established three Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul in a small house which had been a wayside inn, and set about Christianising his people in earnest. There was no pomp or parade about the matter. The good Sisters were quite content to establish an asylum for the little children in what had been the stable of the inn, and to open their school in two little upper chambers. Two Jesuit Fathers came and devoted a month to a regular mission. Processions were organised and lectures given, some in the factory, others at the little inn. The novelty of the enterprise excited the attention of the people, and when a decided movement at last of interest in the mission made itself clearly felt, M. Harmel took advantage of it, with the help of the Sisters, to form Christian associations, first among the young girls, then among the young men, and then among the workmen themselves. The first young girl who gave an effectual impulse to the work, was a girl selected by the Sisters, with their usual sound instinct, because they found her capable of absolute devotion to a not by any means estimable mother, and to a decidedly reprehensible sister. She was a peasant-girl, brought up in a disorderly family, by no means choice or refined in her language; but the Sisters, for whom she conceived a great affection, saw that she was generous, fearless, and determined, and that was enough.
With the girls, with the young men, with the workmen, no sort of direct or indirect pressure was ever for a moment employed. The associations which they formed were managed by themselves, M. Harmel, the priest whom he finally brought to Val-des-Bois, and forwhom he built a chapel, and the missionary brethren, giving advice and aid only when and as it was asked. One excellent workman, who had been in the factory for many years, and who was much esteemed by M. Harmel, was asked one day by the priest why he had never taken any interest in the religious associations. 'I do take an interest in them,' he replied, 'and they are doing a great deal of good. I don't feel moved to join them, but I do them a great service often. Many a time in the cabarets I hear a man say, "Oh, the papa Harmel is a good man, no doubt; they are right to call him there 'the good father.' He is all that, but nobody can get any work there unless he is a little saint!" Then I get up and say, "Don't talk like a fool! You see me; I have worked for 'the good father' thirty-five years. I have never done my religious duties, but nobody treats me the worse for that! That shuts them up!"'
One great obstacle, at the outset, to the success of these associations, out of which the 'Christian Corporations' were eventually to grow, was the hostility of the elder married women to the 'Enfans de Marie,' and the other societies of young girls. They objected that these societies broke up the Sunday balls, and when they were asked whether these Sunday balls did not lead to a good many scandals, they replied, 'Oh, young people must amuse themselves; we used to amuse ourselves!' They insisted too, that the girls would neglect their home duties to attend mass and the meetings of their new societies. One particularly recalcitrant dame made her husband's life a burden to him, because he not only encouraged his daughters in going to the Sisters, but actually went to mass himself. Finally, one day the poor man came to see the Sisters. He was evidently much exercised in his mind, and showing theSisters a small sum of money he had, he said, 'I have saved this up to bring my old woman to a better mind, and I want you to help me.' They asked him how. 'Why, you see, all the trouble comes because she don't know you, and won't know you, and thinks everything wrong about you. Now if one of you will just take this money, and buy her a new Sunday gown, and take it to her as if it was a gift you wanted to make her, that will bring her all right, I know, and we shall have peace in the house!'
What Sister could resist such an appeal? The pious fraud was perpetrated, and the worthy dame gave way along the whole line!
This working population of Val-des-Bois, when M. Harmel began his work among them, it will be seen, was a fair type of the average working populations of France in those parts of France where the influence of Radicalism has been most potent, and the influence of the Church weakest. There is another factory in the same commune now. There are sixteen others within a radius of three French leagues, and the city of Reims, with its population of nearly a hundred thousand souls, is within half an hour of the place. All the disturbing currents of socialism, of agrarianism, of indifferentism play about and upon the place constantly. The Sunday ball is an institution still. The influence of the local authorities during the last ten years has been thrown against the Catholic associations, and therefore, from the nature of the case, in favour of dissipation, debauchery, and disorder.
To see his work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile circumstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder and more sceptical than M. Harmel.
In 1861, as I have said, not one workman could befound at Val-des-Bois who dared to go to mass. In 1867, at the request of forty of his workmen, M. Harmel assisted them in drawing up the statutes and arranging the programme of a Catholic Working-Men's Club. The initiative came from them. No pressure of any sort or kind was put upon them to take it. It was the free outcome of the influence exerted upon them by the example of the Harmel family and by the religious and charitable work which the Sisters and the priests had been doing at Val-des-Bois. Within a year the club doubled its membership. When the invasion came, in 1870, it was an established institution.
'M. Harmel planted his Christians at Val-des-Bois,' said to me one of the most interesting men I met at Reims, 'as our vine-growers in Champagne plant their vines. It is one of the mysteries of our viticulture that the grapes which yield our most delicate and exquisite wines of Ay, all sparkle and sunshine, can only be made to yield those wines when they are planted in our poorest and most chalky soil, and in regions where the climate is so ungenial that the plants have to be set as closely as possible together in the ground. We really huddle them together, as we do sheep in the hurdles in winter, to keep one another warm. This M. Harmel did with his converts. He taught his workmen to associate more closely with one another, he brought their minds and their hearts together, and let them act one upon another. He lived and moved and had his own being among them like a father, and in this way insensibly they came by degrees to regard each other as members of a family. He has always felt, and his whole life has shown it, that the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," whatever the motives of its authors may have been, put the weak of this world at the mercy of the strong, and set Capitalfree to deal with Labour as a mere matter of bargain and sale. The dominant idea in his mind has always been, as it was in the mind of his father before him—the "good father" of Val-des-Bois—not how to get the most work out of his workmen, but how best to do his own duty to his workmen, thinking that the best way to get them, on their part, to do their duty to him. All this, you see, is quite mediæval and Christian, not in the least modern and scientific! But has the modern and scientific way of looking at the relations of capital and labour, so far, been what may be called a great success? Do we seem to be in the way of organizing a solid modern society on the principles of the "struggle for life" and of the "survival of the fittest"? Certainly these principles are a logical outcome of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and of such legislation as that which in 1791 shattered to pieces at a blow the whole ancient and Christian organization of industry in our unhappy land of France! As certainly too, they are admirably fitted to secure either the complete subjugation of labour by capital or the relapse of France and of Europe into barbarism. Is not universal suffrage a natural and easy weapon of capital in any "struggle for life" with labour? Is it not clear that, in losing the notion of duty to his employer, the workman has necessarily lost the idea also of duty to his fellow-workmen? "Every man for himself" is the motto of modern democracy, and do we not see that the syndicates of workmen which it was the object of the Radicals to establish by their law of March 1884 concerning "professional syndicates," in order to facilitate and promote "strikes," are only kept together and made to work by sheer terrorism? What is the sanction of the measures ordered by such syndicates excepting the fear in which every member goes of hisfellow-members? Does not that take us a long way on towards savage life? Does not that tend directly to build up a subterranean machinery of despotism which will be at the service of the shrewdest head and the longest purse whenever any real and decisive issue arises between organised capital and organised labour?