Evening
EVENING IN THE PLACE D'IÉNA, PARIS.
Déjeunerat 11.30 or 12 and dinner at 6.30 or 7 are the two essential meals of the day. Breakfast, served in the bedroom, consists of coffee or chocolate and small crisply baked rolls with butter and perhaps honey, while the Anglo-Saxon meal called tea is only an established feature among the upper classes, where English customs are extremely fashionable. The two chief meals both consist of at least four courses, with a cup of coffee added to give a finish to the whole. It might be thought absurd for those who are poor or living with great economy to begin their meals with anhors-d'oeuvre, but Miss Betham-Edwards, whose knowledge of the French is sufficiently wide to be an authority, asserts that a careful housekeeper will give this preliminary course as an economy, for being great bread-eaters a little scrap of ham or sausage or herring eaten with several mouthfuls of bread will take the edge off the appetite and enable her to be less lavish with the other courses. Soup is very frequently made out of the water in which vegetables have been stewed with a suspicion of flavouring added, and the meat courses are providednot from large joints, but from little scraps of meat which the French butcher produces in astonishing quantities from the same animal as his English neighbour handles in an entirely different and very much less economical fashion. These methods of cutting with a view to quantity rather than quality give much of the meat an unhappy toughness as though it were cut across or against the grain. Even thebonne-à-tout-fairewill prefer to make a sacrifice in the quantity of food in each course of a meal if by so doing she can be quite sure of finishing with a cup of coffee.
The contrast of the mid-day meal, consisting of a chop and bread and cheese, supplied by the small provincial hotel to the commercial traveller in England, with that provided or obtainable in France, is astonishing. It is true that the knife and fork given for the first course must be retained for those that follow, but this little labour-saving custom can be overlooked in the presence of the savoury dishes that follow. Still more pronounced is the contrast when dinner-time arrives, for a very large majority of country hostelries in England will offer nothing more varied than a large plate of ham and eggs or cold meat, followed by bread and cheese and perhapsapple or plum tart. It is the universal demand for appetising and well-cooked meals throughout France that ensures for the wayfarer wherever he goes an excellent dinner of several courses. It would, however, be unfair not to mention that a very great improvement has been taking place in the hotels of England in the last few years owing to the demand for well-cooked meals caused by motorists. The pre-eminence of France in this matter will cease to be remarkable before long if the present rapid progress is maintained. If one enquires still further into the reasons for French folk being dainty in the way their food is prepared, the explanation given by Mr. T. Rice Holmes that Celtic peoples as a rule have weak stomachs may perhaps be the correct answer.
If wall-papers are not often renewed in French houses, there is a delight in clean raiment which is most commendable. Clothes which are not washable are frequently sent to the cleaner, and as the most poorly paidmidinettegenerally buys good materials for her clothes they last some time, and will stand cleaning and refurbishing better than the average clothes worn by her equals in England. This is typical of the inbornthrift of the whole nation. Personal ablutions are, on the other hand, not so frequent or so thorough as among Anglo-Saxons, the supply of water for this purpose being generally very meagre and the basin for washing the face and hands awkwardly small. The itinerant bath is still to be found in country towns. It is brought to the house of those who desire to indulge in this luxury, and the water at the required temperature is provided also. The rinsing out of a bath with a little clean water after it has been used is not considered a sufficiently thorough method of satisfying individual fastidiousness, and a cotton covering large enough to entirely line the bath is therefore usually provided for each person. If one adds to this the difficulties confronting those for whom it is considered scarcely within the limits of propriety that they should be entirely unhampered by garments while in the bath, this simple operation of the toilet becomes a somewhat laborious undertaking!
It has been already stated how great is the reverence of the French for the family. It is certainly fostered by that wonderful institution the Family Council, a form of highly developed autonomy dating from the far-away days whenFrance was a Romanised province. The council is formed to look after the welfare of orphans and weak-minded and ne'er-do-weel minors. It consists of six members—three from among the relatives of each parent—and is presided over by a localjuge de paix, who is attended by his clerk.
For those sons of wealthy parents who are developing into incorrigible idlers and a source of perpetual anxiety to their parents, owing too often to the excess of ill-judged kindness lavished on only sons by widowed mothers, there has been instituted in France what is known asla maison paternelle. If sent to this establishment the boy generally threatens to commit suicide or some other desperate act. He is at first placed in a solitary cell, where he is under the constant supervision and the special care of a "professor," who is appointed to deal with the particular case. By salutary talk, the most inflexible discipline, and regular studies, accompanied by a judicial kindliness, the refractory youths are almost invariably brought to their senses after a few months, and retain the warmest affection for the professors in after years.
As a rule the French child of almost everyclass except the very lowest comes into the world with the prospect of some future inheritance of land or capital. The first infant in a very large proportion of families is both alpha and omega, and it is very exceptional for parents not to restrict their offspring to two or perhaps three, which is almost counted as a large family. For some time past census figures reveal the very remarkable fact that considerably over 1¾ millions of married couples are childless. Rather more than a quarter of the marriages result in one child; another quarter has two children, and 17 per cent are childless. Thus the duty of making up the deficiency of one large section and the total failure of another falls upon one-third of the married couples, and the latest returns show that this task is only just accomplished, the average number of births for each family hovering about the bed-rock figure 2. The year 1907 was altogether alarming, for the figures showed 19,890 more deaths than births for the twelve months, and it has been with considerable relief that the civilised world has seen the surplus turned over to the more healthy direction in subsequent years. With a population that does not increase there is less and less danger of overcrowding orof extreme poverty, and therefore France houses her citizens better than Germany, England, or the United States. The individual child arrives in the world with his or her place more or less made in advance, and as the years pass by the son or daughter steps into the vacancy caused by the departure to "the land o' the leal" of a parent or relation. Such an even balance of vacancies and new arrivals tends to make livelihoods more stable in France than in the countries where the number of persons to the square mile is steadily increasing; it robs the whole nation of any desire to find homes outside the limits of the fatherland, and makes it practically impossible to make any real use of colonial possessions. Until civilised countries come to settle their differences without the senseless and futile appeals to brute force, by which they have unsuccessfully striven to do so in the past, this static condition of the population of France can only be looked upon as a calamity, but the growing strength of commercial ties is weakening bellicist prejudices and national antipathies every day, and the fact that the nations are now asking themselves whether any advantage is gained by fighting a civilised people shows that the world is on thethreshold of emancipation from what is most truly a great illusion.
Being so often the only child or one of two, the infant enters on life as the ruler of the household. The devoted parents, instead of following the golden maxim, which says "Apply the rod early enough and there will be no need to use it at all," give way to every passing mood or whim of their offspring, and insist that the nurse shall follow the same foolish course. If the infant cries it obviously needs something, and this must be supplied regardless of character-building. No wonder thatla maison paternellehas been found a needful institution in the land! Maternal duties are not as a rule undertaken by the mother, and in a very large number of instances this is necessitated or at least encouraged by the large share in the maintenance of the household taken by the wife. In Parisian flats theconcierge, owing to the smallness of his wage, is generally obliged to go out to work and depute his wife to undertake his duties during his absence. A mewling and puking infant under these conditions is a nuisance and must be brought up elsewhere.
In the average middle-class home the children are not given their meals in the nursery, but ata very early age eat at the same table as their parents, and enjoy a varied menu including wine when English children are still having little besides milk puddings and mince.
Much more is concentrated into the earlier years of life in France than across the Channel. This is particularly so in regard to thejeune fille, who ceases to come under that title as soon as she has reached the age of twenty-five. The business of getting married must be achieved by that time, or else there is nothing for it but acquiescence in the popular judgment that the young girl has become an old girl—is on the shelf—and to preserve her self-respect must retire either to a convent or a conventual boarding-house. This custom is, like many others, as undesirably medival, gradually breaking down owing to the strongly intellectual training now given to thejeune filleat statelycées. No religious instruction is given in these schools, and the girls are therefore developing a new independence. A change, too, is taking place in the extremely secluded life that girls of the middle and upper classes have hitherto led. They are not invariably taken to school and fetched by a maid, and it is quite possible that this emancipation from continual supervision may lead to aconsiderable modification in the present method of arranging marriages. The existing system of the choice of a husband for their daughter being made by the devoted parents has a striking similarity to the customs of the Far East. The young men thejeune filleis allowed to see are only those who are eminently eligible, that is, whose financial position is sound and whose family connections are not likely to cause anxiety when brought into the family circle by the union of the two young people.
Centre
THE CENTRE OF PARIS.
To the French mind the idea of the betrothal of a man and a girl without the necessary means for immediately entering the state of matrimony is looked at with the most extreme disfavour. "Falling in love" might lead to most undesirable family ties, for each of the two parties concerned marries a family as well as a husband and wife respectively. No, themariage d'inclinationis a danger, and the young people must learn to fall in love during the honeymoon, a task the French girl seems to find less impossible than it sounds. The Anglo-Saxon method of a growing and entirely non-committal intimacy followed by a period of betrothal scarcely exists in France. Having little knowledge or experience of men,the girl accepts the suitor proposed by her parents because, as a rule, she has not much choice and the time is short before she has reached the old-maidish age of twenty-five. Then beyond this there is all the thrill and romance of some new and strange life in which she may succeed in falling desperately in love with her husband. If not, the situation has occurred before, and the average married woman seems to find some solace in other interests; there will perhaps be a son or a daughter, or possibly both, and on them it will be easy for her to expend her pent-up feelings of love, and later on there will perchance come what is an ideal with the average Frenchwoman—the satisfaction of being a grandmother.
During the short time between the formal acceptance of her proposed husband and the wedding ceremony the affianced pair are not as a rule allowed to be together alone. No doubt in many instances this harsh ruling of long-established custom is broken through, but it would be done surreptitiously unless the parties concerned were exceptionally emancipated from the great body of French tradition. It is also quite unusual for the mother to speak of lovewhen discussing with her daughter a man who has offered himself as a husband; it is merely understood that he is pleased with the girl's general appearance and not dissatisfied with herdot.
Strict Roman Catholics do not recognise the civil contract beyond going through the required legal ceremony. The banns, stating several personal particulars regarding the parents as well as the contracting parties, are put up at themairieten days before the marriage can be performed. If the betrothed pair have not reached the age of thirty, they must have the consent of their parents, but over twenty-one they are able to obtain that consent through a legal process at the office of a certified notary. Even extreme action of this character does not entail total loss of a certain portion of the parental inheritance, for the Civil Code does not permit parents to leave more than a proportion to strangers. One-half must fall to the children's share. Quite recently an example of the small satisfaction this may cause to the recipients came to light. An aged grandparent's estate produced a sum of 100 francs, to be divided equally between four legatees. The legal expenses entailed in certifying the status of each party and other mattersran up to such a large sum that the surplus divisible was barely 20 francs.
On the appointed day the wedding party assembles at themairie, where the mayor, after reading to the couple that portion of the Civil Code relating to the duties of the married state, hears their declaration and the permission of the parents, after which both parties exchange wedding rings and are pronounced man and wife. The register having been signed, first by the wife and then by the husband, the civil ceremony is complete, and in Republican society the wedded pair as a rule trouble themselves not at all about the attitude of the Church to the contract they have made. Many, however, as already stated, do not regard this as the real wedding, and the bride and bridegroom remain apart until the next day, or perhaps two or three days later, when the religious ceremony is performed in a church. There the wedding rings are blessed before being put on, and the completion of the religious ceremony is marked by the presentation of a tray for offerings. One cannot be very long in a French church without this opportunity presenting itself. The writer has vivid recollections of his almost precipitate retreat from theMadeleine after he had been present for a short time at a service in that classic church on the occasion of his first visit to Paris. His memory recalls how cheerfully he paid for his seat for the first time, how he produced another coin when, with a charming smile, a young woman applied for a second alms, and how, when a third bag was placed before him with the wordspour les pauvres, he found a sou, and in a few moments had, with a sigh of relief, exchanged the Gregorian solemnities of the great church for the rattle and stir of theBoulevard des Capucines.
But to return to the wedding ceremony. The young couple having been now made man and wife in the sight of Church as well as the State, they start on their voyage together into the unknown, to discover one another and, if possible, after what answers to a time of courting, to fall in love with each other. Should this time of exploration into each other's characters and temperaments, likes and dislikes, prove entirely unsatisfactory, it becomes a matter of acute interest to enquire how the knot may be loosened or untied. Until 1883 divorce was not legal, but since that year of emancipation the Civil Code permits it for several reasons. These aredivided under three headings: first, unfaithfulness or desertion on either side; second, acts of violence andinjures graves, which covers the great area of incompatibility of temperament; and third, penal sentences passed on the man or woman. It is fairly obvious that this wide doorway will permit the entrance of a great majority of those who wish for freedom from an ill-chosen partner, and the result has been a steady increase in the number of divorces in recent years. The figures were 10,573 in 1906 and 13,049 in 1910. Even the Church of Rome will allow the marriage tie to be severed under certain conditions not perhaps open to a poor couple.
There can be little doubt that divorce in France is facilitated by the fact that the wife has in most cases an independent source of income, and is therefore economically on her feet in the event of a termination of her wedded state. She is, generally speaking, looked upon with less favour as a divorced woman than is a man. No doubt this is due to slow-dying prejudice in favour of the man in these circumstances. Changes are, however, coming with such accelerating speed in these matters that anything written to-day is more or less out of date by the time it is printed.
To come back to the normal condition of married persons in France, there is no doubt that, surprising as it may seem, thejeune filledoes in a very large majority of cases settle down contentedly with the husband chosen by her parents. She blossoms with the speed of an Indian juggler's magic plant into a woman of affairs, and in a very short time is taken into the fullest confidence in monetary matters by her husband. Many develop such a capacity for business that they rapidly out-distance their men folk in such matters, and if, as is very often the case in middle-class life, they are obliged to contribute towards the family budget, their earnings will frequently exceed those of the easy-going husband. Any one at all intimate with France knows the keenness and capacity of the woman in business, whether as a shopkeeper, a manageress, or a hotel proprietor. They can drive a hard bargain and are less easy to deal with than men, although the writer is inclined to think that he has met quite as many men as women who are difficult or unpleasant in a financial matter.
In spite of this frequently existing superior ability in dealing with money matters, a wife must obtain her husband's written consent before shetouches her capital! And further than this, the Civil Code requires that the husband must make good any deficiency from his wife's originaldotshould he wish to obtain a divorce, notwithstanding the fact that the diminution had taken place with her consent; and it is a curious and interesting fact that in the case of disagreement the husband finds the Code ignores the perchance superior wisdom of the wife.
As a rule it ismadamewho rules the household, while "mon mari" is a worshipper who obeys willingly, both being the slaves of their child or children, to whom within the strict boundaries ofcomme il fautnothing must be denied. How, with such spoiling as children, the French man and woman grow up to do their share in the world's work it is hard to understand. Possibly the dislike evinced by the race as a whole to undertake an adventurous career entailing risk, the lack of some of the luxuries which have been long enjoyed, and an element of uncertainty may be in part ascribed to the lack of discipline in the nursery. An explanation for this characteristic might be given by merely pointing to the figures of population, which, as just mentioned, remain almost stationary, and do not provide that driving forcewhich sends other peoples out into new lands in great numbers; but this condition of a static population has been brought about voluntarily by the people themselves, through their desire to be sure of a safe and prearranged career for their offspring. And so it is the family life of the French, the predominance of the weaker partner, and the craving after those conditions of existence generally regarded as feminine, which result in a weakening of France as a colonising nation, and often cause misgivings in the minds of those who are her well-wishers.
Abbeville
THE MARKET PLACE AND CATHEDRAL AT ABBEVILLE.
It may be broadly stated that the French people are content to be governed and to feel a controlling authority in operation in all departments of their lives. This results in a silent acquiescence under long-endured grievances which could easily be redressed by a little ventilation of public opinion. Where the Anglo-Saxon uses his newspapers to make known his attitude towards various matters requiring new legislation, where he takes advantage of an election, parliamentary or municipal, to obtain undertakings from candidates, the average Frenchman will neither write nor speak, so that editors and deputies, and the great public as well, remain generally ignorant of a widespread area of smouldering resentment. Like the burning coal-beds not unfrequently discovered in Central Europe, the undergroundcombustion, which has perhaps been continuing for many years, is only brought to light by accident.
When legislation takes place on some important economic issue it will be framed, as a rule, on abstract lines disregarding the past, and in many ways ignoring general convenience. There is in this way little evolution in the growth of the French constitution, and an old law may exist unmodified so long that when change comes it is so out of date that it must be swept away. The Revolution cut down to the roots the rotten tree of unregenerate feudalism, and planted in its place a sapling which has to conform to the essential requirements of progress; it must be trimmed and lopped, and must put forth new growth in order that it too, in the effluxion of time, may not become as unsuited to modern needs as its predecessor.
In August 1789 the first Republican Parliament wrote down certain cardinal matters relating to the welfare and freedom of the individual and called it the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Thirteen years before this the United States of North America had drawn up their Declaration of Independence,and no doubt this inspired those who framed the more compactly worded document. In their seventeen brief articles French Republicans, in an age when ideas of freedom had fertilised both sides of the Atlantic, boldly and simply stated their new-born beliefs, commencing with the assertion that "All men are born and remain free and have equal rights." InArticle 2they stated that "the object of all political groupings is the preservation of the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man," those rights being "liberty, property, security, and the right to resist oppression." Although possessing the last-mentioned power, it has already been pointed out that the people are slow to make use of it. The nation likewise fails to carry out the spirit ofArticle 9, which says, "As a man is deemed innocent until he shall have been declared guilty should it be necessary to arrest him no rigour that is not essential for the securing of his person shall be tolerated by the law." In the final—the 17th—Article there is food for thought for the Socialist, for it is there stated that property is "an inviolable and sacred right," followed by the qualifying sentence, "No man may be deprived of it, unless public interest demand it evidentlyand according to the Law, provided, moreover, that a fair indemnity be first paid to him." Even the most civilised of peoples are still a good deal short of that high degree of wisdom and goodness which will make every man competent and willing to be his brother's keeper, and it is therefore probable that for some time to comeArticle 17will stand as a living part of the French Constitution. It is interesting to remember that in the Declaration of 1789 the right of Habeas Corpus was first established in France, while it had been on the statute book of England for over a century, and would have been there some time before but for repeated rejections by the House of Lords.
Upon the splendid substructure of the Declaration of the Rights of Man the first French Constitution was reared. It was framed with care, took two years in the making, and was finally accepted by Louis in 1791. Since then there have been many constitutions, but, omitting the Napoleonic interlude, the principles of the Declaration show themselves with triumphant ascendency as the foundation of each reconstruction. Like all written constitutions, modifications are frequently found necessary. Thereis none of the elasticity of the unwritten constitution which exists only in the land of the people who are said to have a genius for governing themselves, and perhaps it is that endowment with the capacity for self-government which makes the nebulous character of the British Constitution so valuable. It is true that a very great majority of well-educated British people could not give any clear idea of the nature of the constitution of their country, and when any constitutional point arises only a handful of experts can state how far the precedents of the past, by which the constitution is modified, affect the immediate issue; and yet there would be a considerable feeling of alarm if it were seriously proposed to make the whole situation plain by producing a modern written constitution, however much based on all that has gone before.
Britons, as a rule, do not even trouble to acquaint themselves with the survival of many ancient royal prerogatives. Walter Bagehot[1]puts into one pregnant paragraph what Queen Victoria could do without consulting Parliament. "Not to mention other things," he writes, "shecould disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is not obliged to engage any men); she could dismiss all the officers, from the General Commanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a 'university'; she could dismiss most of the civil servants; she could pardon all offenders." The present sovereign could do the same, but safeguards in the form of impeachment of Ministers and change of a Ministry preserve the country from proceedings of this nature; but in a country with a written constitution such legacies from the days when the head of the State was a military dictator exist no longer.
[1]The English Constitution, Introduction to 1872 Edition.
[1]The English Constitution, Introduction to 1872 Edition.
While the British law-makers and administrators bear on their backs the whole weight of centuries of laborious constitution-building, the French work with the light equipment of a constitution framed in 1875, everything prior tothat date being null and void.[2]No French politician is therefore required at any time to be aware of a usage of the reign of Louis XI., or any curtailment of the royal authority which may have taken place when Philippe Auguste occupied the throne. The throne itself has ceased to exist since the fall of Napoleon III. in 1870, and France since that year has remained under its third Republic.
[2]The Constitution was slightly revised in 1879 and 1884.
[2]The Constitution was slightly revised in 1879 and 1884.
The laws passed in 1875 provide that the legislative power shall be in the hands of two assemblies—the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate—and the executive in those of an elected President and the Ministry. The Upper House or Senate is composed of 300 members, now entirely elected by the Departments or Senate. They must be over forty years of age. In England, if the Prime Minister is a commoner he can only go into the Upper House as a listener, and all the Cabinet are under the same restriction, but in France Ministers can sit in both Chambers and can speak in either place as occasion requires or the spirit moves. Voting, however, is restricted to the Chamber to which the Minister belongs. One is inclined to wonder whether eloquencethat stirs the hearts and sways the voting in the British House of Commons would be as productive if addressed to the hereditary body. There is no separate Minister for the Post Office, that office being included in the Ministry of Commerce, and there are only twelve Ministers against the twenty or twenty-one of the British Cabinet. The Ministry of Labour and Public Thrift appears almost quaint to the much less thrifty people of England.
The Lower Chamber consists of 584 deputies, and is elected every four years by universal suffrage. On coming of age, every citizen not in military service and having a residential qualification of six months may exercise the franchise. Women have not yet achieved the right to vote. Perhaps the majority of French married women exercise already as much power as they care to possess, for even peasant women are quite familiar with the method of voting through their docile husbands. Only in 1897 were women entitled by law to act as witnesses in civil transactions; prior to that date a woman came under the same category as a minor or the insane!
That the Frenchwoman is beginning to wakeup to the possibilities of her twentieth-century emancipation is shown in a hundred directions. In January 1913 a woman came forward as a candidate for the French presidential chair, the first in the history of the Republic. When questioned as to the seriousness of her purpose she asked, "And why not a woman head of the State? People may regard it as a joke; but what about Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria?" When one remembers, too, the astonishing business capacity of the average Frenchwoman, one is inclined to echo the question, "Why not?" There are already more than a dozen women barristers in Paris, besides seventy doctors, eighteen dentists, ten oculists, and six chemists! Women, too, have for many years occupied on the railways of France positions which are exclusively in the hands of the stronger sex in England. Who is not familiar with the hard-faced woman who with a horn at her lips controls the level crossings?
The only restriction among French citizens to becoming President is that which rules out any member of a royal family which has reigned in France. He is elected for seven years and the salary is £48,000 a year, one half of which isreceived as salary, the other being for travelling and official expenses connected with office. This sum appears generous when contrasted with the £5000 paid to the British First Lord of the Treasury and his unpaid services as Prime Minister of the Crown. The President appoints all the Ministers and heads of the civil and military departments. He declares war with the consent of both Houses, and a Minister counter-signs every act.
The national desire for security prompts the men folk of a large proportion of the upper middle classes to aim towards the pleasantly safe pigeon-holes in the State dovecot. In order to attain these places of refuge from commercial or professional struggle, every public official who has reached the desired haven of his ambition, or at least one of the assured steps that will surely lead him thither, is the subject of endless demands for aid in the same direction from his remotest relatives and acquaintances. Upon this system ofpistonnagethe aspirant to an official position must lean, for if he does not the crowd ready to fill each vacancy will all have superior chances on account of the word here and there spoken on their behalf in the right quarter.Pistonnagedoes not, however, apply to those who aspire to a seat in either the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, where a salary of 15,000 fr. a year and free travelling relieves the representative of financial anxiety, so long as he is devoting his time to his country's service.
By direct and semi-direct taxation about £25,000,000 was produced in 1912. These taxes include a levy on windows and doors, varying according to the density of the population, the more closely inhabited areas paying more than the less populous. There is a tax on land not built upon, assessed in accordance with its net yearly revenue based on the register of property drawn up in the earlier half of last century and kept up to date. The Building tax is 3.2 per cent on the rental value, and is paid by the owner. The Personal tax places a fixed capitation on every citizen, varying from 1s. 3d. to 3s. 9d. according to the department. The Habitation tax is paid by every one occupying a house or apartments in proportion to the rent. The Trade License tax embraces all trades, and consists of a fixed duty levied on the extent of business as revealed by the number of employés, and population, and the locality, and so on, andalso an assessment on the letting value of the premises.
By indirect taxation a little over £100,000,000 was raised in 1912. The sum was realised by stamps of all sorts (excluding postage), by registration duties on the transfer of property in business ways and general changes of ownership, and by customs, including a tax on Stock Exchange transactions, a tax of 4 per cent on dividends from stocks and shares, taxes on alcohol, wine, beer, cider, and alcoholic liquors generally, on home-produced salt and sugar, and on railway passenger and goods traffic. The State monopolies of tobacco, matches, and gunpowder produced the large sum of £38,000,000, but even this did not meet the charges for interest on the National Debt, which were about 51½ millions, the accumulated sum for which this is required being (1912) £1,301,718,302. This is almost double as great as the British national indebtedness.
Over each of the 86 Departments is a prefect chosen by the Minister of the Interior, and through him the minor officials are kept in touch with the Government. The arrondissement and the canton are administrative divisions intowhich each Department is divided, each canton including about a dozen communes. The commune is controlled by the mayor, who is chief magistrate and, as in England, is the head of the municipal body. According to the size of the commune deputy mayors are elected. The great city of Lyons requires 17 of these officials, and when one remembers that the presence of the mayor or a deputy mayor is required at every marriage in order that it may become legal, the number does not seem excessive.
Every canton has itsjuge de paix, who is in a general sense a police court judge. He tries small cases, but his responsibilities are carefully limited, and he may not inflict a fine exceeding 200 francs. Any offence requiring a heavier hand must go up to theTribunal correctionnel de l'arrondissementor the court ofPremière Instance. Thejuge de paixwears a tall hat encircled with a broad silver band, and although, as a rule, a man who has received a fairly good education, his salary averages between £120 and £160 per annum. On such an income there is no opportunity for pretentious living! The wife of ajuge de paixcannot, as a rule, afford to keep a nursemaid, and one maid-of-all-work is as muchas theménagecan afford to maintain. Nevertheless the position is an honourable one, there is a pension at sixty years, and the hours of labour are, to the man with a sense of humour, often brightened by the absurdity of the cases that are brought into court. There is generally much fun for the court in the frequent cases ofdiffamation, in which citizens drag one another into the presence of thejuge de paixfor calling each other names. The court allows noisy altercation in a fashion unknown in England, and the task of the magistrate is, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, almost beyond belief. The breezy outpourings of plaintiff and defendant are ended with thejuge de paix'swords, "You can retire," and, as a rule, some sound and friendly advice has been offered to the unneighbourly neighbours. A very considerable amount of litigation arises through the possession of land or houses, for the thriftiness of the French has always inclined the people towards the ownership of their farms or the land they till. In the old days before the Revolution, all such disputes came before courts in which the unprivileged and poor might be fairly sure of losing the day. The scandal of those venal courts was so great that nothingshort of a clean sweep could effectually rid the land of the curse they inflicted, and the overthrow of the monarchy was followed by the establishment of administrators of justice who were servants of the State and none other.
The correctional courts mentioned deal with the graver offences which are outside the ambit of thejuge de paix. As a rule there are three judges and no jury. These courts are empowered to inflict punishment up to imprisonment for five years. The Courts of Assize are held every three months in each Department. They are presided over by a councillor of the Court of Appeal with two assistants and a jury of twelve, but a unanimous verdict is not required, the fate of the accused hanging on a majority only. Another feature of these courts is thejuge d'instruction'ssecret preliminary investigation into each case.
Superior to the Courts of Assize are those of Appeal and theCour de Cassation, which became so well known to the English public during the famous trial of Dreyfus. This court, as its name implies, can abrogate the ruling of any other tribunal, with the exception of the administrative courts. This high authority decides on mattersof legal principle or whether the court from which appeal has been made was competent to make the decision in question. It does not concern itself primarily with the facts of the case, and if it should annul any finding the case is sent to a fresh hearing of a court of the same authority.
Tea
FIVE O'CLOCK TEA IN PARIS.
The administrative police, orgardiens de la paix, are approximately equivalent to British police constables, and must not be confused with thegendarmerie, which is a military body carrying out civil duties in times of peace. Thegendarmerieare recruited from the army, there being one legion in each army corps district. Their strength is roughly 22,000 men, equally divided between cavalry and infantry. In Paris there is a separate force known as theGarde républicaine, which carries out police duties very much the same as thegendarmeriein the Departments. They number about 3000, of whom 800 are mounted. The French prison system was in a very antiquated state in 1874, when a commission on prison discipline issued its report in favour of cellular confinements. Prisons were therefore reconstructed, and after many years had elapsed some of the older ones were demolished, the prisoners thereafter being removed from thedisadvantages they encountered in association. The system of isolation required the construction of a huge new prison at Fresnes-les-Rungis. It contains 1500 cells, and when it was completed in 1898 the historic Paris prisons of Grande-Roquette, St. Pélagie, and Mazas were swept away.
Taken as a whole, one can scarcely endorse Taine's utterance that modern France is the work of Napoleon. The present organisation of the nation is undoubtedly due to the masterly brain and tireless energy of Napoleon, but the national characteristics of the French people have shown little change. The existence of a constitution, the even-handed administration of justice, and the opening of the highest offices in the State to the citizen of the humblest origin, do not yet seem to have affected the nature of the people. Laughter, tears, and anger are still near the surface; love of adventure in thought, word, and deed does not yet lead the French into the acquisition of the solid advantages their enterprise would bring did they only persevere on the lines of their initial enterprise. In spite of the almost frantic desire for liberty there is no doubt that the French tamely submitto a régime which Englishmen would find in some matters quite intolerable. If suspicion of smuggling falls upon a house the police can make domiciliary visits of a quite arbitrary character. The Civil Code, too, must be regarded as oppressive so long as it retains its attitude of looking upon the untried person as guilty until such time as his trial establishes his innocence, and the Anglo-Saxon mind is revolted at the practice of endeavouring to extort a confession from a prisoner. The Napoleonic mould did not alter these qualities, and even in the matter of religious tolerance the French have still much to learn.
The annual sum of 4250 francs (£170) was considered by Napoleon—in so far as he had opportunity for considering the subject—a sufficient amount of money to devote directly to the education of the people! But the rulers of States a brief century ago were, as a whole, inclined to leave educational matters in clerical hands, and the nineteenth century will stand out in the world's history as the dawn of State responsibility in regard to the education of the people.
At the Restoration in 1814 more than twelve times as great a sum as that expended by Napoleon was being devoted to education, and the amount rose to 3,000,000 francs in 1830, to 12,000,000 during the Second Empire, and to 160,000,000 under the Third Republic. To the last summust be added another 100,000,000 francs (excluding the money devoted to the erection of schools) spent by the municipalities and communes, making a total of about £11,400,000. In 1912 the State alone was spending about £12,000,000 on national education.
At the head of this great spending department of the State is the Minister of Public Instruction. He controls not only the whole of the primary schools, but to some extent the entire educational machinery of the country, private schools being subjected to State inspection and supervision. Between 1901 and 1907 some 3000 public clerical schools, and more than 13,000 private clerical schools, were suppressed by law. The law passed in 1904 required that all schools controlled by religious bodies should be closed within the next ten years, which period is just about to elapse. Since the State awoke to its responsibilities in educational matters, it has taken roughly a century finally to extinguish clerical control. The schools are divided into the three grades of Primary, Secondary, and Higher, and the State admits into any of these pupils of any grade of society. In the rooms oflycéeor college the classes meet in a truly democratic fashion.The college, which is controlled by the commune under the State, is considered inferior to thelycée, which is entirely in the hands of the central authority. While the primary schools are compulsory and gratuitous between the ages of six and thirteen, the secondary schools charge small fees ranging from £2 a year up to £16. But parents with bright children can often avoid this expenditure through the lavish system of scholarships offered by the State.
Lycéeswere first established for girls in 1880, and there are now several in existence, one of them having 700 students. The hours of the classes are from 8.30 to 11.30, and from 1.30 to 3.30, and the aim has been to run them on the same lines as those of the boys. Since clericalism was removed from the education of girls, there has no doubt been a very considerable change in the scholastic environment of thejeune fille, but until a long period has elapsed it will be difficult for any but those in the closest touch with educational life in France to point out how far the advantages outweigh the disadvantages orvice versa. The lay schoolmistress may be in essentials as religiously-minded as any convent-trained type of woman. Her influenceon her pupils may produce as moral and as religious types of women in the coming generation as those of the immediate past, but in such a change in the training of the girls of a race not fond of moral discipline who can foresee the results?
The general tendency of the training given in thelycéehas been towards the suppression of originality. There seems to have grown up in the mind of the authorities an impression that the only means of keeping the youth of France under proper control is by holding them down with an iron grip, not merely during the hours of work but during recreation also. This may have been necessitated by a certain lack of discipline in the earliest years of life, young children being allowed to have their own way to an altogether undesirable extent. As soon as they are old enough the boys, having, as a rule, begun to be a source of much trouble in the home, are sent to school. If their parents are able to afford the fees, the gates of thelycéesoon close upon their days of wilfulness and disobedience. In place of the home life and the feminine influence with which they have been familiar, they are confronted with a discipline of semi-militaryseverity. Games are not allowed, and in the hours of recreation in walled playgrounds of a generally forbidding order, walking and talking alone are permitted. Here, as in the class-room, the boys are perpetually under the eyes of thepion, whose duties are restricted entirely to the maintenance of order. Owing to suppression in natural directions, it is not surprising if the minds of the boys should turn into the unhealthy directions of intrigue and pernicious literature.
M. Demolins, who a few years ago tried the experiment of running his school on English lines, has found the results excellent. So greatly appreciated are his efforts to abolish the bad features of thelycéethat he is unable to meet the demand on the capacity of his buildings. He is of opinion that the Anglo-Saxon is superior to the French because of the better training given at school, discouragement of initiative and suppression of independence being the chief features of the schools of his own country, while the Anglo-Saxon allows boys a freedom which develops self-reliance and individuality.