As to the other auxiliary charges against the Catholic missionaries, and the answers of Abernethy and a few others to questions propounded by Spaulding, we do not consider them worthy of serious attention. They are all directly or indirectly the creatures of Spaulding’s fertile imagination, who, if not crazy as Colonel Gilliam said, has allowed his hatred of Catholicity to carry him down to fearful depths of crime, to calumny, falsehood, and forgery. His motives are apparent, the gratification of his lust for revenge, and his hatred of our faith; that of the associations who have signed his outrageous statements is the present flourishing existence of the Catholic missions in every part of Oregon; and the end proposed is to compass their destruction by appealing to the religious prejudices of the authorities at Washington. We have too much confidence in the wisdom and good sense of the Executive and Congress to suppose that they will be influenced by such inflammatory appeals—bearing on their face the palpable impress of dishonesty and prejudice—and attempts to disturb the good fathers in their labor of love, as well as of hardships and suffering; and we expect soon to hear of those fanatics receiving a fitting rebuke in our Senate for attempting to make that august body the vehicle of perpetuating the vilest sort of falsehoods and slanders against the Catholics of this country.
[130]Ex. Doc. No.37, U. S. Senate,XLIst Cong., IIIdSession. 1870-1.
[131]Victor’sThe River of the West,p.400.
[132]Works of Stephen Olin,vol. ii. pp.427, 428.
[133]Gray’sHist. of Oregon,pp.231, 246.
[134]History of Oregon.By G. Hines.
[135]Murder of Dr. Whitman,pp.23, 24.
[136]Gray’sHistory of Oregon,p.235.
[137]Murder of Dr. Whitman,p.89.
[138]Murder of Dr. Whitman,p.46.
[139]Murder of Dr. Whitman,pp.53-55.
[140]The five Cayuses who were hung in Oregon City, June 3, 1850, as accomplices in the massacre, were all Protestants, and remained so till they received their death sentence. All the others who are known as murderers, among whom were Lumsuky, Tamahas, and the two sons of Tilokaikt, were also Protestants. Joseph Stainfield, Jo Davis, and the other half-breed, who, it is said, plundered the dead, if anything, were certainly not Catholics. Three of the condemned on the morning of the execution solemnly declared that the Catholic missionaries had nothing whatever to do with the murder. The following letter to the Bishop of Walla Walla, from the Archbishop of Oregon City, will be found interesting:
Oregon City, June 2, 1850.
The supposed Cayuse murderers will be executed to-morrow. They have abandoned Dr. Whitman’s religion and have become Catholics. I am preparing them for baptism and for death.
F. N. Blanchet,
Archbishop of Oregon City.
[141]Oregon American.
[142]Letter of R. T. Lockwood to VeryRev.J. B. A. Brouillet, V.G., Sept. 29, 1871.
[143]Toupin’s statement.
“Why does man go about organizing systems, when he himself must be reorganized?”
“The thing to be done will not unite the doers.”
“When man forgets what he is, he soon is put into a state of uneasiness, and made to suffer in pain what was designed for him to be pleasure.”
“We are always learning the way that heaven acts, but are very shy to invite it to act upon us, and are very unwilling to submit to the preparatory process.”
“Self-improvement by the selfish spirit is the most deceitful of all deceits.”
“While you persevere in washing a man’s face with dirty water, it will never be clean; you must get pure water to wash with.”
“A child is a religious being prior to its being an intellectual being; and must not be turned away from the divine order.”
We paid a visit yesterday (Sunday) toSt.Lazare, and all that we saw and heard there struck us as so interesting, and so entirely different from our preconceived notions concerning that ill-famed centre of crime and punishment, that we cannot but think our readers will likewise be interested in hearing a detailed and accurate account of it.
We had been told that the famouspétroleuse, charged with the murder of Monseigneur Surat, was still there, and we could not resist the opportunity offered us by a friend of going to see this extraordinary type of female ferocity—the woman who put a pistol to the prelate’s head, and, when he mildly asked her what he had done to her that she should hate him so, replied: “You are a priest!” and shot him on the spot. On arriving, however, we found that she had left for Versailles the night before. There were still fourteen of her terrible compeers remaining out of the four hundred and thirty that had been taken on the barricades and in the general saturnalia of the Commune and locked up inSt.Lazare.
We visited the prison from beginning to end. Nothing surprised us so much as the gentleness of therégime, and the absence of all mystery or personal restraint in the management of the prisoners. The jail had nothing of the repulsive paraphernalia of a prison about it, and but for its massive walls, its vast proportions, and a certain indescribable gloom in the atmosphere, inseparable, we suppose, from the mere presence of such a population, one might very wellhave mistaken it for an orphanage or any ordinary asylum conducted by a religious community.
Thesallesare magnificently spacious and lofty, with broad, high windows opening on courts; there are four courts—préauxthey are called—one after another, within the precincts of the prison; the beds are like hospital beds; and there was nothing in the dress of the women, or the manner of the nuns toward them, to tell an uninitiated visitor that they were not patients rather than prisoners and malefactors of the worst kind. There was the same silence brooding over the place, the same quiet regularity in all the arrangements, the same supernatural sort of cleanliness that one never sees anywhere but in convents. The population of the prison varies from 1,200 to 1,800, and the government of these dangerous and desperate subjects is committed to the sole charge of a community of religious calledSœurs de Marie-Joseph. They are fifty in all. Their dress is black serge, with a black veil lined with a light-blue one. They were founded at the close of the last century by a Lyonnese lady, whose name the superioress told us, but we forgot it.
It was just two o’clock when we arrived, and the superioress and another nun gave up assisting at vespers in order to show us over the house, which from its immense size takes two hours to visit in detail. The prisoners are divided into several categories, and are kept distinctly separate from each other. There are first thePrévenues, who are put inon an accusation which has not been investigated; then theDétenues, against whom proof is forthcoming, and who are awaiting their trial; then there are theJugées, of whom the categories are various, as will be seen. These classes are never allowed to come in contact, even accidentally, with each other; they do not even meet at meals. Those who are condemned to one year’s imprisonment remain atSt.Lazare, but if the sentence extends to a year and a day, they are sent off to one of theSuccursales. When their term is expired (those who are sentenced to a year only), they may continue atSt.Lazare if they choose. Many of them, touched with grace, and sincerely converted from their evil courses, dread going back to old scenes and temptations that have proved so fatal to them, and beg to be kept asfilles de servicefor the work of the house, or in the workshops, etc., and they are never refused. The superioress said they made very active official servants, and it is very seldom they fall away from their good resolves, and have to be expelled or punished. We were passing through one of the passages when a sudden noise of voices from the court made us go to the window and look out. We saw a troop of prisoners pouring out into the yard; they were running about, laughing and chatting, and apparently enjoying their momentary liberty with the zest of school-boys.
“Who are these,ma mère?” we inquired.
“Hélas!” The exclamation was accompanied by a sufficiently expressive gesture.
“They are generally a very numerous class here,” she explained; “but just now there are but some two hundred of them; thepétroleuseswere largely recruited from theirranks, and great numbers of them have been sent on to Versailles.”
Some one asked if these unfortunates were more refractory than the other prisoners, thieves, etc.
“As a rule, they are less so,” replied the nun; “we hardly ever are obliged to have recourse to thegardienswith them, and we have more frequent conversions amongst them than any other class of prisoners. There comes a time to many of them, especially if they have had any seeds of religious belief sowed in their minds in childhood, when the future both of this world and the next comes on them with a sense of horror, and then grace has an easy task with them. I could tell you of miracles wrought in the souls of these poor sinners that would sound like tales out of the lives of the saints, and we have had deathbeds among them little short of saintly. But, again, we too often see all our efforts fail, and they reject grace with a sort of demoniacal obduracy, and go back to their old lives without a moment’s passing compunction: nothing seems to touch them or frighten them.”
We asked if the nuns were not afraid of them, if they never threatened or insulted them.
“Oh! never!” replied the superioress emphatically; “the command we have over them, and the way they yield obedience and respect to us, is almost miraculous. You see these poor outcasts down there; I suppose there is nothing in the world more lost or degraded than they are; they are the lowest specimens of the lowest stratum of vice and every species of depravity. Well, the youngest nun in the community is as safe in the middle of them as if they were all honestmères de famille. I have been a religious twenty-two years, and out of that ten years atSt.Lazare, and I have never known them usean expression to any of us that called for reprimand.”
We may add that she said the great majority of these offenders were girls from the provinces, young and inexperienced for the most part, and who come to Paris expecting to make their fortune, and unprepared for the temptations awaiting them in this great trap for souls.
We saw the wordsOratoire Israelite, Oratoire Protestant, painted over two doors, and the latter suggested the inquiry whether there were occasionally any English women amongst the inmates ofSt.Lazare.
“Oh! yes, I am sorry to say we have a good many English,” said the mother; and then, shaking her head and smiling, she added: “And I am sorry to tell you that they are the most unmanageable of all, for they are generally given to drink, and when this is the case they are like mad-women and we can do nothing with them. A little while ago we had one who got into such a fearful fit of fury that it was necessary to put her in the lock-up; her shrieks were so loud that they were heard half over the place, and terrified the youngdétenues; toward evening she grew so outrageous that thegardienswere sent to put her into the strait-waistcoat—they are powerful men with strong hands and iron nerves, and trained to the work—but she baffled four of them for two hours; they were not able to seize or hold her; at last they gave it up in despair, and said: It is no use, we must go forles sœurs! One of them came to fetch me, and beg me to come or send some one to help them. He was trembling in every limb, and the perspiration was pouring from his face as if he had been wrestling with a wild animal. I took one of the nuns with me, and we went down to the prison, where we were obliged to spend the wholenight with the prisoner, coaxing and caressing her, before we got her to calm down and cease shrieking.”
We asked to what class in life the English culprits generally belonged—if they were exclusively of the lowest? The superioress said, on the contrary, they were often persons verycomme il fautin their manners, and evidently had had an education far above the class of domestic servants—some of them were in fact quite like ladies; she believed they were mostly governesses, or teachers who come over to Paris in search of situations or lessons, and, not finding either, are driven by hunger and despair to steal, or do worse; but theft is generally the offence of the English prisoners.
“Sometimes, indeed,” said the superioress, “it makes us laugh to hear the account of the thefts they commit, there is often something so comical in the way they do it, and the cunning and dexterity they display are beyond belief; the most accomplished Frenchfiloucannot hold a candle to them.”
Sad as this testimony was, it could not be quite a surprise to any one living in Paris who had seen much of the class of English alluded to, but it will come probably as a new and terrible revelation to many in England; and if this paper should fall into the hands of any lone, friendless English girl hesitating about coming to Paris to earn her bread, the writer prays God she may ponder on the foregoing statement, and think twice before embarking on so perilous a venture.
Severalsallesare filled with a class of prisoners calledjeunes insoumises; they are all very young, some merely children of the day; they are not always actual criminals, sometimes they are only subjects with dangerous propensities beyond the control of parents, and they are sent here to be trained to better ways;especial pains are directed to these juvenile offenders, and the result is often very consoling. The superioress said they had lately had a baby of six years old brought in for stealing. “It was only a cake that tempted the poor little mite,” said the mother deprecatingly, “but she was very naughty and unmanageable otherwise, and the parents were glad of a pretext to get rid of her for a time.”
It was not only of such innocent culprits as this that the superioress spoke with indulgence, her large-hearted charity took in all the lost inhabitants of the dismal abode in which she dwelt and toiled; and there was something unspeakably touching in the way she every now and then seemed to try as it were to excuse the worst among them, to plead for them indirectly by showing up any remnant of good in them. We met the women we mentioned our seeing out at recreation on their way along a corridor; they walked singly, with their arms crossed; we were quite close to them as they passed us; and anything more ignoble than their features it would be difficult to conceive—the expression of the faces was scarcely human; they resembled vicious animals in human shape rather than women. This struck us all so forcibly that we could not help making the remark to the superioress. She seemed positively hurt, as if we had said something personally unkind to her, and, on my expressing some pagan surprise at it, she broke out into such a tender pleading for “those dear souls whom our Lord longs for and that cost him so dear” that, though I felt thoroughly rebuked, I could not be sorry for having called out her protest. It was like having laid one’s hand roughly and unawares on a vibrating instrument that sent out a strain of heavenly music.
“Oh!” she continued, with such a look as I shall never forget, “if we only knew what the value of a soul is, how precious it is in the eyes of God, we would never look with disgust at the poor wretched body that holds it; but I assure you when one comes near to those poor sinners the disgust soon wears off, and we think of nothing but their souls, their precious, immortal souls, that were bought at such a price!”
The more we listened to her and observed her, the less surprised we were at the universal respect, worship I might almost call it, that greeted her presence everywhere—it was so spontaneous and so free from anything like fear or servility. As soon as she appeared at the door of a work-room, or a class, or a dormitory, the prisoners rose immediately to salute her; and several times I noticed some of them make signs to others who were not looking, or touch them on the shoulder, to stand up and welcome the mother. She generally said a word to themen passant: “Good-morning, my children! Are you behaving well?” etc., and then there was a ripple of curtsies and a perfect clamor of “Yes, mother, thank you!” and the hard, bad faces would brighten for one moment with a smile.
The influence of the nuns with the prisoners is indeed little less than a permanent miracle, Among other instances of it, the superioress told us the following: “A desperate woman, charged with misdemeanors of the worst kind, was brought to the prison. She was the daughter of a butcher, and,” added the superioress, laughing, “I beg you to believe that her manners were just what might have been expected.” A few days after her arrival she broke out into a fit of mad fury, and thegardienshad to be sent for to take her to thecachot; but as soon as she saw them enter thesalle,she drew a huge pair of scissors from her pocket—how she came by it we never discovered—and, holding it open and pointed at them with one hand, she beckoned them with the other to come on, yelling all the while like a raging lioness. The men tried to terrify her, to dodge her, but it was all useless, she baffled every attempt to seize her. They gave it up as hopeless, and came for me. She no sooner saw me than she cried out: ‘Send them away, and I will go with you; but I will never move a foot with these men!’ I sent them away, and told her to give me the scissors; she gave it at once, and then I took her by the hand and led her off without a word.
“On another occasion, one section of prisoners got up a scheme for killing thegardiens. They were to tie their woodensabotsinto clusters of eight together, and when thegardienscame to convey some refractory subject to thecachot, the others were to fling several batches of these formidable missiles at their heads. The effect must have been fatal, but fortunately there was some delay in the appearance of thegardiens, and the prisoners, having all ready, grew impatient, and at last, losing all control, they began to yell and call out for them and brandish theirsabotsfuriously. The nun who was in waiting ran down to warn thegardiensnot to come up, and then came to tell me what had happened, and to consult about sending for the soldiers, who are always ready at theposteoutside the prison; thegardienswere frightened, and advised this being done. I thought, however, the storm would subside without having recourse to such an extreme measure. I was not the least afraid of the women personally; I knew they would never lay a finger on one ofus, whatever their fury mightbe, so I walked into the midst of them.
“‘What is this row about?’ I said. ‘I am ashamed of you; let me hear no more of it.’ Then taking the ringleader—we always know the one to pitch upon—I told her I must put her in prison; she made no resistance, only stipulating that thegardienswere not to touch her.”
“Are thegardienscruel to them that they hate them so much?” I asked.
“No, never,” she answered; “they have no opportunity for it if they felt so inclined; but they represent strength and justice, whereas the nuns represent only weakness and pity; the prisoners resent the one, but not the other.”
Some one asked the superioress if she had ever known a conspiracy attempted to kill or hurt any of the sisters. She replied never, on which we related to her an episode of the Roman prisons, told us recently by the Papal Nuncio. The female prisons in Rome are, likeSt.Lazare, conducted entirely by nuns, without even the moral support of aposteat the gates to enforce their authority. One day a plot was organized for doing away with the nuns and making their own escape from the prison. The prisoners were sixty in number and the nuns twelve, so the scheme offered little serious difficulty. It was agreed that on a certain day when all the community were assembled with the prisoners in the workroom, the latter were to seize the nuns and fling them out of the windows into the yard. The signal agreed upon was the close of the work-hour, when the superioress clapped her hands for them to put aside their work. The secret was so well kept that not a hint transpired, but the superioress felt instinctively there was something abnormal brewing.She had no apprehension at the moment, however, and gave the signal as usual when the clock struck the hour. No one moved. She repeated it. Still no one stirred. She gave it a third time more emphatically, and then the leader of the band walked straight up to her and struck her a blow on the face. The meek disciple of Jesus quietly knelt down, turned the other cheek, and said:
“If I have done you any harm, tell me so, but if not, why do you strike me?”
The woman fell upon her knees, burst into tears, and confessed everything. When the superioress had heard her to the end, she said:
“Now, my daughter, I must take you to the dungeon; you know this is my duty.”
“Yes, mother, I know it is,” and she gave her hand, and let herself be led away as meekly as a lamb.
How omnipotent is the power of love, and how lovely this world would be if love were allowed to rule over it everywhere!
Before we had finished our inspection of the house, we went to benediction in the prison chapel. There was a short sermon first on the gospel of the day. About eight hundred of the prisoners were present. Some were yawning, and evidently only there because they could not help themselves, others assisted with edifying devotion, but all were respectful in their attitude and demeanor. The organ was played by one of the nuns, and the choir, was formed of prisoners from the class already alluded to. The singing was not very scientific, but it struck us all as peculiarly touching, the more so, no doubt, from the associations connected unconsciously with the choristers. The superioress said it was looked upon as a great privilege to sing in the choir, and it is heldout as a reward for sustained efforts and good conduct. As we saw the little altar lighted up, and the golden rays of the monstrance shining down upon the singular congregation, one could not but think what a grand and beautiful manifestation of redeeming love it was, this presence of the God of holiness, a willing prisoner in such a temple. There were the Sisters of Marie-Joseph, women of the purest, most unblemished lives, self-devoted victims to the God who died on Calvary for outcasts and sinners, kneeling side by side in unloathing sisterhood with the vilest offscourings of this great Babylon. A sight wonderful beyond all human understanding if the mystery were not explained to us by the voice from out the little crystal prison-house: “I came to seek sinners, and to dwell with them.... And whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do likewise to me.... And there is more joy in heaven for the return of one sinner than for ninety-nine of the just.”
And many are the joys given to him and his saints by the inmates of this great emporium of sinners. Last All Saints’ day five hundred of the prisoners approached the sacraments, some in the most admirably penitent spirit, but all of their own free will, and for the moment at least with hearts touched by grace and turned away from evil. They were prepared for the feast by a retreat of eight days, preached by a Marist father.
After benediction we resumed our inspection, and came finally to thepétroleuses. There was nothing in the room where they were, or their surroundings, to distinguish them from the other prisoners, and if the superioress had not whispered to us as we were entering the dormitory that these were the women, we should never have suspected the bright, orderlyroom to be the den of wild beasts it was. An American lady who was of our party amused the nuns by asking repeatedly: “But where are the wicked ones?” She could not persuade herself—and indeed it was difficult—that the hundreds of women we saw so gently ruled, and held as it were with silken cords, were the most dangerous and abandoned characters of the metropolis. The fourteenpétroleuseswere not dressed in the prison livery, but wore their own clothes: some of them were very spruce and comfortable, but all were tidy and clean—none of them had a poverty-stricken look. They were nearly all of them standing in sullen silence beside their beds; one woman was dandling a baby, a white-faced, shrivelled little object, tricked out in a fine blue frock with little flounces. We think we said there had been four hundred and thirty of thesepétroleusesin the prison. The superioress said they had behaved very well there, and never once obliged the soldiers to interfere. They were cold-blooded, defiant creatures, but this was not their sphere of action; they bore no ill-will to the sisters; quite the contrary, many shed tears on going away. They fell into the discipline of the prison with great docility as to hours and rules, and seldom broke silence. On one point only they were intractable—they would not work.
“It’s bad enough to be conquered and butchered by Versailles,” they would answer, “but we are not going to work for them.” And neither threats nor entreaties could induce them to take a needle in their hand, or to sit down to a sewing-machine. It was no use explaining to them that they would not be working for Versailles, that they would work for themselves, and might buy extra food at thecantinewith their day’s earnings;no, they got it into their heads that Versailles would in some way or other be the better for their working, and nothing could get it out of them. The very name of Versailles used to rouse them to fury; it was like a red rag to a bull. They boasted of their exploits during the Commune as things to glory in. One swore she had set fire to five buildings, and her only regret was that she had been too late to set fire toSt.Lazare. Many of her companions expressed the same regret with quiet effrontery, that would have been amusing if it had not been so appalling. Every one of them declared that if it were to begin over again, they would do just the same, only better,because now they had more experience.
“And what is your opinion,ma mère?” we said; “do you think it will begin again, and that thepétroleusesare still in existence, or was it a type born with the Commune, and passed away with it?”
She replied unhesitatingly that she believed it would begin again, and that thepétroleuseswould come out in greater force than ever; that they were neither daunted nor disarmed by the failure of the Commune, but rather infuriated by defeat, and more resolute and reckless than before—reckless to a degree that only bad women can be, and ready to stake body and soul on their revenge. She said that the conduct of Versailles was weak and ill-judged beyond her comprehension; that they had far better have left these women free at once on the plea that they were women, if they did not mean to deal out their deserts to them; but now these desperate creatures were exasperated by incarceration, and by a mockery of a trial that either liberated them or sentenced them to a punishment they knew perfectly wellthe government did not mean to carry out. It was like letting loose so many bloodhounds on France to set these women at large again.
“We have seen themde près,” continued the superioress, “and we are one and all convinced that the next attempt will be worse than the first; we have terrible days in store—thepétroleuseshave not said their last word.”
Speaking of the Commune led to our asking about her own experiences under it. It appears that the employees atSt.Lazare, the director, inspector-general, and their assistants, were among the first turned out, and agents of the Hôtel de Ville installed in their places. The first thing these guardians of public justice did was to set free one-half of the population, such as were available for the public services; and able servants they proved themselves on the barricades and as incendiaries. To account for and in some measure palliate the superhuman ferocity displayed by the women of the Commune, we may as well mention here a fact not generally known, and which was told to us by a distinguished medical man, who was here all through that terrible saturnalia, and by a Sister of Charity, who could also speak from personal knowledge. It would seem that the snuff dealt out to the people from the government manufactories was mixed in large proportions with gunpowder. The effect of this ingredient, taken in very small quantities, is to excite the brain abnormally, but taken in large ones it brings on a kind of savage delirium tremens. The wine distributed to thepétroleuseson the barricades and elsewhere was also heavily charged with some such element of madness. It seems to us that it is rather a consolation to hear this, for though it reveals a diabolical instinct of soul-hatred in the few, itexplains, on the other hand, how it was that occasionally we saw young and hitherto mild, inoffensive women suddenly transformed into demons.
The superioress said that for the first three weeks that the nuns did duty for the Commune, nothing could exceed the respect and consideration they received from them.
“They were as docile as little girls to us,” she said, “and never did anything without coming to consult us. Theinspecteur-generalnamed by the Commune happened to have formerly been a clerk at the prison. My surprise when I saw him in his new character, and with such credentials, was great; but he seemed himself very much ashamed, and when I asked him what had induced him to join the Commune, he replied that it was really devotion to the nuns; he had accepted the office because he knew we would want a protector, and he preferred being on the spot to watch over us. It was not laughing matter, or I could have laughed at his audacity. And he actually pleaded this argument on his trial at Versailles, and was acquitted on it! He had always been a well-conducted, honest man, and I am not sure but in the bottom of his heart this good intention toward us may not have been mixed up with a great many other less worthy ones. During all the time he was in constant communication with me, he never had the courage once to raise his eyes to my face. He told us a good deal about what was going on outside, and especially what the women were doing. He spoke in enthusiastic praise of their spirit and courage. He said the fort of Montrouge was lost one day but for a girl of seventeen, who, seeing the soldiers demoralized, and the gunners abandoning their guns and turning to fly, rushed up to one of them, and seized alight and put it to the cannon, and so mocked the cowards, and taunted them all with cowardice and want of mettle, that she rallied every man of them and saved the place. But for this Versailles would have taken it. Ten minutes later, and the defence was abandoned. ‘Had it not been for this plucky littlediablesse, we were lost!’ he exclaimed. Such traits as this prepared us for thepétroleusesof a few weeks later, but he only saw patriotism and valor in them.”
Things went on very amicably between the gentlemen of the Commune and the sisters for three weeks. Then a change came over them. They were not openly rude, but there was what the superioress described as restrained fury in their manner toward the nuns, and the latter felt that the blood-fever was rising in them, and that they would soon break out into open mutiny. The superioress felt this more strongly than the rest, and she was sorely perplexed how to get her flock out of the way of the wolves while it was yet time. It was no easy matter, for, as she quaintly said, “One cannot send off fifty religious like fifty pins, in a box by mail,” and in the present state of mind of the Communists, to awake suspicion was to have the whole community seized and locked up forthwith. The first thing to be done was to procure permission from the Hôtel de Ville. She had been obliged to go of late several times to the prefecture on one business or another connected with her functions in the prison, so the authorities there knew her, and had always treated her with marked civility. She said that the first time she went there the faces of the so-called officials struck her as demoniacal, they were all of them half-drunk—men taken from the gutters of Belleville and Villette to fill offices of whosecommonest outward forms they had no idea, yet they were as deferential to herself and the nun who accompanied her as so many priests might have been. This did not prevent her saying to her companion as soon as they were alone: “Well, if we did not believe in hell, the faces we have seen to-day would have revealed it to us.”
She applied for a permission to leave, and got it without any difficulty. She kept it in her pocket all that day, and the next morning she seemed to hear a voice saying to her interiorly:Now is the moment; send them off! The exodus was planned well, and carried out so discreetly, the nuns going in threes and fours at a time, that not a shadow of suspicion dawned on the employees—their jailers as they now considered them. All that day the superioress kept constantly with them, never letting them lose sight of her for a quarter of an hour at a time, coming and going perpetually, and making future arrangements for one thing or another, so as to put them more completely off the scent. It was only when evening came and there were but eight nuns in the house besides herself, that the flight was discovered. The rage of the director was undisguised. But if he could not catch the fugitives, he could revenge himself on the devoted ones who had shielded their flight at the peril of their own lives. The superioress was at work in the midst of the little remnant of her flock, when he rushed into the room, pistol in hand. A few words passed between them, angry on his part, calm and resolute on hers, then with an oath he left the room abruptly.
“I knew as well as if he had told me,” she said, “that he was gone to see if there was a vacant cell to put me in. I did not feel terrified—God gives such strong graces in momentslike that!—but I felt the same kind of internal voice saying to me: Now is your time; take the others and fly!
“We hurried down the stairs just as we were and went out. We turned to the left, and walked on as fast as we could, without running, toward theGare du Nord. We could hardly have turned the corner of the street when the director was in pursuit of us.Les Détenues, who saw us leave the house and take to the left, called out to him: To the right, citoyen! They are not forty yards ahead! He followed the direction, and this saved us. We reached the station just as the train was about to move. The guards saw us coming, and cried out to us to make haste and jump in. ‘But our tickets! We have not taken them!’ I said.
“‘Never mind, jump in! You will pay at the other end,’ and they hustled us into the nearest carriage. We had not seated ourselves when the director appeared on the platform pistol in hand, and crying out frantically to the train to stop. But it moved on, and landed us safely at Argenteuil.”
A few days after theSœurs Marie-Josephhad cleared out fromSt.Lazare, the nuns of Picpus were taken there. This the superioress thought was one reason why the officials were anxious to get them out of their way; they meant to put the others there, and they did not want any inconvenient witnesses of their own proceedings.
When we had seen all that was to be seen in the vast building, the superioress took us to the private chapel of the community. It was formerly the cell ofSt.Vincent of Paul, that is to say, the space occupied by the sanctuary; the altar stands where his little bed used to be, and the window step is worn away by the pressure of his feet, when his increasing infirmitiesobliged him to have recourse to the solace of a footstool. The prison itself was formerly a Lazarist monastery; the refectory is exactly as it was in the time ofSt.Vincent, unchanged in all except its occupants; and the great, sombre corridors echoed for twenty years to the footsteps of the sweet apostle of charity. His memory is held in great veneration throughout the prison, and the population speak of him with a sort of rough, filial affectionateness that, the nuns told us, is often very touching; they seem to look on him as a friend who ought to stand by them.
I had nearly forgotten one incident in our visit that had a peculiar beauty of its own. We were passing by the open door of what seemed an infirmary; all the beds were occupied, and there were several nuns sitting in the room, when one of them ran out and said:
“Oh!ma mère, you will not pass without coming to saybonjourto our old women. Ever since they heard you were showing the house, they have been watching for you.”
The superioress said it was late, and she really had not time just now, but the nuns begged harder, and said that the old women knew she was going into retreat that evening, so they would not see her for eight days, and the old women, seeing they were in danger of being refused, began to cry out so piteously that the mother, asking us if we would not mind walking down the ward, yielded, and we went in. These old women are all infirm and incurable, and have been sent as such from one hospital or another toSt.Lazare. Their delight when the superioress came in and spoke a word to each was almost rapturous. I stood to speak to one old soul, but instead of detailing her own aches and pains after the usual manner of those dear, blessed,garrulous poor people, she burst out confidentially into ecstatic praises ofnotre mère—how sweet and kind she was, and how she loved them all, and what she did for them, and what an angel she was altogether, “as indeed all the good sisters were,” the good soul made haste to assure us. We found, on comparing notes with our friends, that those to whom they spoke had improved the opportunity in the same way. It seemed quite a treat to them to find an audience for their grateful praises of theSœurs. Indeed, as far as our view of them went, the Sisters of Marie-Joseph fully justify the love they receive so plentifully. The superioress is what the French would callune maîtresse femme, a combination of energy and gentleness, with a certain frank brightness of manner that is very winning to a stranger, and must be a great help, independent of stronger agencies, in enabling her to win the confidence and disarm the rebellious spirit of the women she has to deal with. It was wonderful to watch her as she passed on fromsalletosalle, saying just the right little word to all of them, and bringing a smile on all the faces, old and young, good and bad. Her manner, while it was perfectly simple and familiar, never lost its dignity; but there was not the faintest shadow of that spirit which too often hinders the salutary influence of virtue over vice—keep off; for I am holier than you! With these infirm old women she was affectionate and caressing as a mother, petting them like children, and encouraging their fearless familiarity toward herself. They had been here all throughthe Commune, they told us, and witnessed from their windows—the infirmary is on the ground floor—all the scenes enacted in the court byces dames, as they mockingly styled them, who had come to replace theSœurs. But the worst of that terrible interval to them was the terror they were in of being burnt to death. They saw the flames rising on all sides from the conflagrations in the neighborhood ofSt.Lazare, and they were in momentary expectation of seeing the prison itself fired. The doors were opened for them to fly, but “à quoi bon, puisque nous n’avions pas de jambes pour fuir?” they observed jocosely. This was the lastsallewe saw. Before the superioress took leave of the incurables, she asked them to pray for the nuns during their retreat, which was to begin that evening. They promised in chorus that they would, and one said: “We will offer up all our suffering this week for the good sisters,” and all the others pledged themselves to do the same.
So ended our visit toSt.Lazare. It was a sad and yet an unutterably consoling one. We hear a great deal about the atheism and immorality and wickedness of Paris—and God knows there is plenty of them—but there is much also that is bright and pure and beautiful mixed up with the bad, if only we looked for it and proclaimed it. We would find the pearls of purity, and the rubies of charity, and the emeralds of hope, and the salt of the Holy Spirit, scattered everywhere amidst the general corruption, healing and redeeming it.
The Labor Question has become one of the most formidable questions—perhaps the most formidable question—of the day; and the worst feature of the question is that, though it has been looming up in the distance for nearly a century, and constantly coming nearer and nearer, and more and more pressing for a solution, the statesmen, reformers, and philanthropists of no country seem to know what answer to give it, or how to treat it. There is no lack of nostrums, and every petty politician is ready with his “Morrison pill”; but no one gives a satisfactory diagnosis of the case, and the remedies offered or applied have served thus far only to aggravate the symptoms of the disease.
There is a very general conviction among the workingmen themselves that, in the distribution of the joint products of capital and labor, capital gets the lion’s share. Capitalists, or they who can command capital or its substitute, credit, grow rich, become millionaires, from the profits of the labor they employ, while the laborer himself, with the most rigid economy and frugality, can barely keep soul and body together, and not always even that. Yet, if we look at the millions deposited by the laboring classes in our savings-banks, and the large sums collected from them for eleemosynary and other purposes not necessarily included in the expenses of living, this statementseems exaggerated. Then, too, the majority of the millionaires with us, and, perhaps, in England and France, began life as workmen, or, at least, without capital and with very little credit.
It is not easy to say precisely what the special grievances of the workingmen are, at least in our country, since comparatively few of the wealthy or easy classes of to-day inherited their wealth, or had to start with any appreciable advantages, pecuniary, educational, or social, over their compeers who have remained in the proletarian class. The International Association of Workingmen do not tell us very distinctly what their special grievances are, nor can we gather them from the eloquent lecture of their mouthpiece, Mr. Wendell Phillips, the candidate of the labor unions of Massachusetts for governor of that state. The evils he complains of, if evils, grow out of what is called “modern civilization,” and seem to us to be inseparable from it. This is also clearly his opinion, andThe Dublin Reviewshows that it is the view taken by the Internationals in England and France. Mr. Phillips says:
“Modern civilization is grand in seeming large and generous in some of its results, but, at the same time, hidden within are ulcers that confront social science and leave it aghast. The students of social science, in every meeting that gathers itself, in every debate and discussion, confess themselves at their wits’ end in dealing with the great social evils of the day. Nobody that looks into the subject but recognizes the fact that the disease is very grave and deep; the superficial observer does not know theleak in the very body of the ship, but the captain and crew are suffering the anticipation of approaching ruin. Gentlemen, I am not here with the vain dream that we shall ever abolish poverty. My creed of human nature is too bitter for that. There will always be men that drink, and as long as there are such, there will always be poor men—shiftless men. There are always half-made men—nobody knows why they were born.
“Is civilization a failure? Stretch out your gaze over all the civilized world. There are, perhaps, in Christendom two or three hundred millions of people, and one-half of them never have enough to eat. And even in this country one-half of the people have never had enough of mental food. All over the world one-half of Christendom starves either bodily or mentally. That is no exaggeration. You may go to France or England, and find a million of men that never saw meat once a year. Take your city, and go down into the very slums of existence, where human beings by the thousands live year in and year out in dwellings which no man in Fifth Avenue would trust his horses in for twelve hours. I will take the great social spectre that confronts social science the world over—prostitution, the social ulcer that eats into the nineteenth century. And everybody who studies the subject will confess that the great root from which it grows is that the poverty of one class makes it the victim of the wealth of another. Give woman her fair chance in her own fields of enterprise, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will disdain to buy diamonds and velvets with the wages of shame. Give man his fair chance in the world of labor and enterprise, and ninety-nine out of a hundred men will disdain to steal. The grog-shops of the great cities have always appointed the municipalities as their own standing, committees. And this is at once the cause and effect of the poverty of the masses. I have known men who were intemperate in Boston cured by being sent to Paris. Why? Because in the brighter life, the more generous stimulant, the great variety of interest in the European capital, he found something that called out his nobler nature, starved out his appetites. So it is with the intemperance of a nation; and to cure it, you must supplement their life with the stimulus of the soul. Why isit that three-fourths of the criminals are of the poorer classes? Why do the students of crime tell you that when you have taken out about fifteen per cent. of the criminals, consisting of the enterprising, energetic, and intelligent, the rest are below par bodily and mentally? Because they are the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of persons who were bodily and mentally weak. Out of these weak ones the devil selects his best tools. Feed that class better, and you will empty your prisons.”
This plainly enough attributes the evils the workingmen seek to remedy to modern civilization, which enables the few to become rich and leaves the many poor, destitute, festering in ignorance and vice. M. Desmoulins, in hisApology for the Internationals, as quoted byThe Dublin Review, says: “The Parisian Red, far from being out of the pale of human nature, is only a spontaneous product of what is pompously styled modern civilization—a civilization that, resting to this hour on war between nation and nation, town and town, farm and farm, men and men, is still in many respects sheer barbarism.” As far as we are able to collect the views of the Association, it attributes the undefined grievances of the proletarian class to no one specific cause, but to modern civilization in general. In this, if the workingmen confine their objection to material civilization—the only civilization the age boasts or recognizes—we are not disposed to quarrel with them. Yet we all remember the outcry raised in all classes of society and from all quarters against the Holy Father, because he refused to form an alliance of the church with modern civilization, and for his supposed condemnation of it in the Syllabus. The International Association of Workingmen, whose members are spread over nearly the whole world, and are numbered by millions,is a vast organized revolt against this boasted civilization of this nineteenth century. And so far it is not wholly without excuse, and even much may be said in its defence, though their proposed substitute for it may be utterly indefensible.
Modern material civilization, dating from the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, and more especially from the accession of the House of Hanover to the English throne, and the accession to power in England of what in the time of Swift and Addison was called the Urban party—money-changers, bankers, traders, merchants, and manufacturers—has been based on capital employed in trade and industry, in opposition to capital invested in land and agriculture. It is a shopkeeping and manufacturing and maritime civilization, essentially and eminently a burgher civilization, and resulting especially in the burgher class, or, as the French say, thebourgeoisie. A civilization based on material interests, and proposing the multiplication and amassing of material goods, necessarily produces the state of things which excites the opposition of Mr. Phillips and the Internationals. It creates necessarily an antagonism between the interests of capital and labor, and therefore between the employers, as representatives of capital, and the employed, or workmen. The interest of capital is to get labor at as low a rate of wages as possible; the interest of labor is to get as high a rate of wages as possible. This antagonism is inevitable.
Employers in vain pretend that the interests of capital and labor are the same. They are not so under a civilization based on Mammon, or under a civilization that seeks only the advancement of material interests, and invests capital only for the sake of material profit. In the struggle,the stronger party, under a material system, is always sure to succeed. And this is always the party of capital; for labor seeks employment to live—capital, for profit or gain; and the capitalist can forego profit more easily than labor can forego employment, since to live is more urgent than to gain. This secures the advantage always to the capitalist. The inequality which necessarily results cannot be overcome by equality of suffrage, or the extension of suffrage to the proletarian class, as politicians pretend; for, though numbers may triumph at the polls, the stronger interest, as our American experience proves, is sure to carry the victory in the halls of legislation. “The stronger interest in a country,” said Mr. Calhoun to the writer, “always in the long run wields the power of the country.”
Universal suffrage, which was defended on the ground that it would tend to protect labor against capital, has in fact a contrary tendency, and in practice almost invariably favors capital. The whole of our legislation—which so favors capital or its substitute, credit, or which mortgages the future for the present, and makes debt supply the place of capital, covers the towns with money or business corporations, and builds up huge monopolies—has grown up under a system of universal suffrage. In an age and country where material interests predominate, what the people, capitalists or proletarians, ask of government is, laws that facilitate the acquisition of wealth; but when such laws are enacted, not more than one man in a hundred can avail himself of the facilities they afford.
The great scientific discoveries of which we boast, and which have wrought such marvellous changes in our modern industrial world, were, asto their principles, made in a less material age than the present, before the modern burgher civilization was fairly inaugurated; but their application to the mechanic arts, to production and transportation, whether by sea or land, has been made since, and chiefly within the last one hundred years. The introduction of labor-saving machinery has, to an extent not easily estimated, superseded human labor, broken up the small domestic industries, as carding, spinning, and weaving, carried on in the bosom of the family, and securing it a modest independence, and small farming, carried on chiefly by the father and his sons, and built up in their place large industries and large farming, beyond the reach of people of no means or small means but their labor, and in which human labor is employed only in the form of labor at wages. The introduction of machinery, or the working of mills or farms by machinery driven by steam or by horse-power, requires capital, or an outlay possible only to large capital or combinations of small capital. Take, for instance, the steam carder, spinner, and weaver; the mule, jenny, and power-loom; the patent mower, reaper, and horse-rake; threshing and winnowing machines—hardly any of them heard of or only beginning to be heard of in our own boyhood, at least in this country; take the railway and the locomotive—and you can easily see that modern industry, and in a measure even agriculture, fall necessarily into the hands of large capitalists, individual or corporate, and cannot be prosecuted on a small scale, at least profitably. We have corporations for condensing milk and making butter and cheese, regardless of our youthful friend the dairymaid, and for supplying us with ice. Perhaps nothing has tended so much to enlarge the inequality betweencapital and labor as the introduction of labor-saving machinery in nearly all branches of industry.
We do not make war on labor-saving machinery, which, we have heard it said, increases the power of capital six hundred million fold, though that seems to us hardly credible. We could not now do well without it. We could not well dispense with our cotton and woollen factories, and go back to the hand-cards, and spinning-wheel, and hand-loom which, in our own boyhood, were in every farmer’s house; but we cannot forget that the independence of the laborer—now a laborer at wages, and obliged to make cash payments for what he consumes—has gone with them to the advantage of the capitalist. We could not well dispense with railways, and yet there is no denying that they are monopolies, that labor cannot compete with them, and that they impose a heavy tax on labor. They also tend to convert the independent laborer into a workman at wages, and the freeman into the slave of machinery, to enrich a few railway presidents and directors, and stock-jobbers. Then, those great corporations, without souls, are not only stronger than the laborer, but stronger than the government. No great feudal lords in France or England were ever more formidable to the crown than such corporations as the Pennsylvania Central, the New York Central, the Union Pacific, with our National Bank system, are to the government, state or general. Neither state legislatures nor Congress can control them, and they have already made both simply their factor or agent.
There is a truth which cannot be denied expressed in the following paragraph from Mr. Phillips’ lecture:
“Now, look at it. You say, why do you find fault with civilization? Tonight is a cold night, and you will go home to parlors and chambers warmed with the coal of Pennsylvania. Why don’t you have it here for $3 and $4 a ton? Why don’t you have it here at an advance of $1 or $2 over what it is sold for at the mouth of the pit? Because of the gigantic corporations and vast organizations of wealth. The capitalists gather three or four millions of tons in your city—sell it when they please, at such rates as they please, and the poor man struggling for his bread is the sufferer. A rich man is careful; he won’t put his foot in any further than allows of its being pulled back. If he heard a groan coming from the people at something he did, he would withdraw his investment, for nothing is more timid than wealth. But let that man take $100,000 or so and put it in with nine others, and make a capital of $1,000,000; then he is as bold as Julius Cæsar. He will starve out 13,000 coal miners. The LondonSpectatorsays that the colossal strength of Britain has reason to dread the jointure of $456,000,000 of railroad capital. How much more should America have reason to dread such combinations, when Britain has more than ten times our wealth!”
Yet is there not some compensation to the proletarian class in the very system which tends so fearfully to increase their numbers and dependence? Grant that coal might be delivered from the mines in Pennsylvania in this city at $3 a ton; but suppose there were no railroads and no railway monopolies, could or would coal from the same mines be delivered in this city as cheap as it now is? Suppose there were no railways between this city and the great West, would wheat, flour, beef, pork, and the other necessaries of life be cheaper for the laboring class in this city than they now are? Railway companies may charge exorbitant rates of freight, and yet the laboring classes get the chief necessaries of life cheaper than theywould, other things being equal or unchanged, without them. Those things might be cheaper in the localities where they are produced, but not elsewhere. The evil of these monopolies and corporations is not so much in the enhanced cost of living chargeable to them, as their multiplication of the class dependent on capital for employment; and in their power to shape the action of the government to their special interests. It is far better for the workman to depend on a single wealthy individual who is likely to have a soul than on a soulless corporation. The combination of capital in corporations for industrial or trading purposes founds an aristocracy, or ruling class, far more humiliating and crushing to the class below them than aristocracies founded on land and birth, education and manners.
This is the view taken by the Internationals. They war specially against the rule of the burgher class, which is now supreme in society, as formerly were the church, kings, and nobilities. In this opposition to the rule of the burgher class, supposing the means and methods of their warfare just and honorable, we confess we might sympathize with the Internationals, as we have always sympathized with the working-classes. We never have been able to get up much liking for an aristocracy based on Mammon, who, Milton tells us, was the meanest of all the angels that fell, and who, even in heaven, went about head down, and his eyes fixed on the gold of heaven’s pavement. It is well for no country when its ruling class are the moneyed or business class. Yet it would be difficult to say, as to our country at least, what class can be better trusted with the government, or what class has more virtue, more nobility of sentiment, chivalric feeling, nobleraims, or higher purpose. Nothing better from the proletarian class could be expected, and, judging from the Paris Commune, nothing so good. The workingmen have all the love of money, all the sordid passions, low views, and degrading vices that can be charged to the burgher class, and, perhaps, fewer redeeming qualities. Civilization has descended to the burgher. What would it gain by descending to the proletary? But let us listen once more to Mr. Phillips:
“I think our civilization is better than anywhere in the world. Now, gentlemen, you say to me, What do you intend to do? Every man has a different theory, and I have no panacea. My theory is only this: I know that a wrong system exists, and that the only method in these states of turning the brains of the country on one side is to bring it into conflict, and organize a party. If I should ask one of your editors to-night to let me indite an article on labor and capital, very likely he would refuse me, or if he granted it, it might be because a fanatic like me would sell a copy or two. But if you will give me 50,000 votes on one side, and the balance impartially divided between your Fentons and Conklings and Seymours, I will show you every journal in the city of New York discussing the question with me. Labor is too poor to edit a column in a New York journal, but when it comes in the shape of votes, then those same journals cannot afford to disregard it. Now, let us organize it. The ultimate view which we aim at is co-operation, where there is no labor as such, and no capital as such—where every man is interested proportionately in the results. How will you reach it? Only by grappling with the present organizations of power in the nation. It is money that rivets the chains of labor. If I could, I would abolish every moneyed corporation in the thirty states. Yet I am not certain that that would be a wise measure, because it seems probable that the business of the nineteenth century can hardly be carried on without corporations; but if it be true that facility and cheapness of production are solely to be reached bythe machinery of corporations, then I say, gentlemen, that the statesmanship of this generation is called upon to devise some method by which wealth may be incorporated and liberty saved. Pennsylvania has got to find out some method by which Harrisburg may exist without being the tail to the kite of the Pennsylvania Central.
“I think, in the first place, we ought to graduate taxes. If a man has a thousand dollars a year and pays a hundred, the man that has five thousand a year ought to pay five hundred. I would have a millionaire with forty millions of dollars taxed so highly that he would only have enough to live comfortably upon.”
That our civilization is the best in the world, it is patriotic to believe, and under several aspects it no doubt is so, or at least was so, a few years ago; but the burgher influence, which decides the action of government, is fast preventing this from continuing to be so. We were intended by nature to be a great agricultural people, and we have labored with all the force of the government and artificial contrivances to become, spite of nature, a great manufacturing and commercial people, like the people of Great Britain, as if our territory were as limited as that of the British Isles. Whatever advantages we possessed over the nations of the Old World in the beginning, we owed to the extent, cheapness, and fertility of our vast tracts of unoccupied lands, which enabled the working-man, after a few years of labor at wages, to become a land-owner, and to become the cultivator of his own Sabine farm. But the influence of the ruling classes, with its chief seats in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, has been steadily exerted since 1824 to deprive the country of these advantages, and to create as large a proletarian class as possible, so that no doubt, if, aside from the vast public works, or rather, the so-called internal improvements undertaken byprivate corporations, and which give for the time employment to large numbers of workmen, skilled and unskilled, we now offer any advantages to the laborer over those he has abroad—at any rate, if we do, those advantages are fast disappearing.
We are no more favorable to the system of corporations than is Mr. Phillips; and the writer of this for years opposed with whatever abilities he had their creation and multiplication. He did so till he saw opposition could avail nothing to check their growth. No opposition can avail anything now, since the abolition of slavery has, in a great measure, identified the great planting interests of the South with the burgher interests of the North, as it was intended to do. For this Mr. Phillips is himself in no small degree responsible, and as an International, or a leader in the labor movement, he is only trying to undo what he hoped to do as an abolitionist. Philanthropy is an excellent sentiment when directed by practical wisdom and knowledge; but, when blindly followed, it creates a hundredfold more evil than it can cure, even if successful in its special aims. Even Mr. Phillips doubts if the corporation system can be safely abolished. We tell him there is no power in the country that can abolish it, because it governs the general government and nearly all the state governments. Give Mr. Phillips the fifty thousand votes he asks for, and the party he wishes to organize, he would, no doubt, become a power in elections, and could command an important place in the government for himself, and places also for his friends; but, however important the place to which he might be elected or appointed, he would find himself impotent to effect anything against the system he opposes,or in favor of the system he approves.
Mr. Phillips tells us that his main reliance is on the “education of the masses.” So do we, only we protest against calling the people who have rational souls “the masses,” as if they were piles or heaps of brute matter. But education given by the burgher civilization as educator, or suffered to be freely given by it, will tend to perpetuate that civilization, or the very system, social and industrial, which Mr. Phillips and the Internationals war against, not to displace or reform it. Let the education of all the children of the land be entrusted to a society whose principles were so admirably summed up and approved by a former governor of Massachusetts, namely, “Let the government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor,” how much would the education given do to elevate or meliorate that society? No order of civilization or society ever does or ever can educate in reference to a higher ideal than its own. Hence the reason why the state or secular society cannot be a fit educator of children and youth, and why all education can be safely entrusted only to the spiritual society whose ideal is the God-man, perfect, and the highest conceivable.
Purely secular education proceeds on the assumption that men and nations always act as well as they know, or that all individuals and nations will act uniformly in reference to their own interests so far as they know them—an assumption disproved by every one’s daily experience, as well as by the universal experience of mankind. Mr. Phillips ought to know that men who ought to know better are often carried away by their lusts, their passions, the force of events, and social and other influences, to act in directopposition to their better judgment. There are comparatively few of us who cannot say with the heathen poet:
“Video meliora, proboque,Deteriora sequor.”
Men do wrong or fail to follow the right less from ignorance than from passion and infirmity of will. Society could not subsist if founded on what the philosophers in the last century called enlightened self-interest, or what Jeremy Bentham called “utility,” or “the greatest happiness” principle. What is wanted is something stronger than interest, something stronger than passion, which, while it enlightens the intellect, gives invincible firmness to the will.
The only power that can control this system, the evils of which Mr. Phillips points out, while its social and industrial tendencies he deplores, and adjust the various conflicting interests of society on the principles of justice and equity, is and must be supernatural. The English system of checks and balances, of restraining or balancing one interest by another, is a delusion, as the failure of the experiment fully proves. It restrains the weaker interests, but strengthens the stronger, makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer, and hence in no country do you find larger accumulations of wealth, and side by side with them a deeper or more widespread poverty or more squalid wretchedness. There are no resources in the order of nature for a people that adopts the burgher system, and makes material interests the great aim of life, from which power can be drawn adequate to overcome the evils of the system against which the Internationals wage their relentless war. We can find no deliverance in the natural order, and must seek it, if anywhere, in the supernatural, that is, inreligion—and in a religion that speak with a supernatural authority, infuses into the soul a supernatural energy, and lifts it above the world and its systems or civilizations, above all earthly goods, and fixes its affections on the Unseen and the Eternal—a religion that gives light to the intellect and firmness to the will. It is only education in and by this religion that can avail anything.