IN THE NORD--_continued_
LILLE
Thanks to Louis XIV., French Flanders became politically French more
than two centuries ago. But it still remains essentially Flemish. The
land has a life and a language of its own, like Brittany or Alsace. The
French Fleming is rarely as haughty in his assertion of his nationality
as the French Breton; but when a _Monsieur de Paris_, or any other outer
barbarian, comes upon a genuine _Flamand flamingant_, there is no more
to be made of him than of a _Breton bretonnant_, standing calmly at bay
in a furrow of his field, or of the bride of Peter Wilkins enveloped in
her graundee.
Even in the great and busy cities of Lille and Roubaix, the Flemish
tongue holds its own against the French with astonishing pertinacity.
But if French Flanders is still more Flemish than French, the Flemings,
I believe, are very good Frenchmen, just as I imagine the most
enthusiastic Welshmen of Mr. Gladstone's beloved little principality,
would be, after all, found, at a pinch, to be very good Englishmen.
Architecturally, their ancient Flemish capital, Lille, now the chief
town of the great Department of the Nord, is decidedly more French than
Flemish.
The seven sieges it has sustained have left it quite bare of great
historic monuments, and during the past thirty years millions of francs
have been spent upon its streets, squares, and boulevards, with the
result of giving it the commonplace and comfortable look of a growing
quarter of Paris. Its famous old walls have been improved off the face
of the earth; and I am glad to say that few if any of the noisome
cellars seem still to exist in which, when I first knew the place, not
so very long ago, thousands of its industrious working people used to
dwell like troglodytes.
Marlborough's cannon spared the fine seventeenth-century Spanish Lonja,
and there are traces still to be discerned about the modernised mairie
of the ancient palace of Jean Sans Peur and Charles the Fifth. But there
is no Flemish building here comparable with the Hôtel de Ville and the
Beffroi of Douai. Of old Flemish customs and traditions, however, there
is no lack in Lille, and I came upon a curious proof of the vitality of
its local patriotism. This was the regular publication, in the most
widely circulated morning newspaper, of a series of carefully prepared
articles on the archæology and antiquities, the legends and the archives
of the old Flemish capital. One of the editors of this journal showed me
in his office a collection of these articles, reprinted from the
newspaper, and now filling some twenty volumes.
I spent my first midsummer morning at Lille in the Musée which has been
installed in the Hôtel de Ville. The Wicar collection of drawings there,
I need hardly say, is of itself a 'liberal education' in art. During his
long residence at Rome in the Via del Vantaggio, the Chevalier
Jean-Baptiste Wicar wasted neither his time nor his money. What
treasures were then to be picked up by such a man--for Wicar died not
long after the Revolution of July 1830! Where he found his Masaccios,
Robert Browning told me that he knew; but where did he find that
incomparable bust in wax which charms with all the mystic feminine grace
and more than all the feminine beauty of the Mona Lisa? Possibly M.
Carolus Duran may be able to throw light upon this; for he was one of
the earliest beneficiaries who profited by the fund which the Chevalier
Wicar founded for the purpose, as he says in his will, of 'giving to
young men, natives of Lille, who devote themselves to the fine arts, the
means of sojourning at Rome for four years, under certain conditions.'
The Chevalier Wicar was a good Catholic, and he gave to his fund the
title of the 'pious foundation of Wicar.'
I suppose that under the Third Republic this monstrous recognition of an
unscientific emotion would have sufficed to vitiate the scheme, in which
case France would have lost the artistic achievements of M. Carolus
Duran.
The house in the Via del Vantaggio I believe still makes a part of the
'pious foundation,' and the municipality of Lille has very sensibly
added a yearly sum of 800 francs to the 1,600 francs allotted under the
will of the Chevalier Wicar to each beneficiary, together with a
travelling outfit of 300 francs.
Coming back from the Musée to breakfast in my very comfortable hotel
near the _gare_, I found there awaiting me M. Grimbert of Douai, who had
most obligingly come over to show me what the friends of religion and of
liberty are doing in Lille to prove that the religious sentiment is not
'dead' in this part of France, and that the Christians of French
Flanders do not intend to let their children be 'laicised' into the
likeness of M. Jules Ferry and M. Paul Bert, without an effort to
prevent it.
The Department of the Nord has long been conspicuous in France for the
number and the excellence of its educational institutions. The
statistics collected by M. Baudrillart show that it stands side by side,
in this respect, with the Department of the Seine. Of the 663 communes
which make up the Department of the Nord, only three in 1881 were
without a school. The department contains 1,680,784 inhabitants. Of
these, considerably more than one-third, or 680,951, live in the 17
cantons and 129 communes of the arrondissement of Lille, which includes
of course the city, and here we find 340 public schools, 1,038 classes
for instruction, and 116 free educational establishments. Over against
this organisation of education must be set a very notable development of
intemperance. I do not infer this from the extraordinary amount of
beer-drinking which goes on in the Nord, to the extent, according to M.
Baudrillart, of 220 bottles a year to every man, woman, and child in the
department, against 170 in the Ardennes and 153 in the Pas-de-Calais.
For, after all, it may be doubted whether habitual drunkenness is much
more common in beer-drinking than in wine-drinking countries; and there
can be no question, I think, that it is much less common in countries in
which wine is abundant and cheap, than in countries in which wine is an
imported luxury. But the consumption of alcoholic liquors is apparently
on the increase in this great department.
At the beginning of this century, long before Lille and Roubaix had
begun to draw into their factories such great numbers of the rural
population as now yearly throng into these prosperous cities, a prefect
of the department, M. Dieudonné, declared that it was not an unusual
thing to see workmen in Lille who worked only three days in the week and
spent the other four in drinking corn brandy and Hollands gin. At that
time the workpeople of the sister city of Roubaix had a much better
reputation, while of the rural populations of French Flanders Dr.
Villermé then affirmed, after a careful study of their habits, that
nothing was to be seen among them of the 'debauchery and the daily and
disgusting drunkenness prevalent in the large towns.'
Persons familiar with the rural aspects of the Nord assure me that this
can no longer be said with truth of the rural farm-labourers. It is,
probably, more true of the farmers and of their families than it was
fifty years ago, but it is, unfortunately, also less true than it then
was of the rural labourers. The number of small cabarets has quadrupled
during the last quarter of a century in the arrondissement of Douai
alone, which contains 6 cantons, 66 communes, and 131,278 inhabitants,
the majority of them occupied in agriculture; and, taking the whole
department, it appears that the consumption of spirits represents an
increase of 100 per cent. in the average consumption of pure alcohol in
the last forty years. It rose from 2.52 litres, in 1849, for every man,
woman, and child, to 4.65 litres, in 1869, and it is now estimated to
reach 6 litres, which would represent an annual consumption of about 16
bottles of brandy at 42 degrees, for every man, woman, and child in the
department. I did not happen to see any drunken women or children in the
department, but M. Jules Simon, in his work, _L'Ouvrière_, gives an
uncanny account of feminine drunkenness at Lille, where there are
special cabarets, it seems, for women. I believe no special estaminets
have yet been set up there for women addicted to tobacco, and, indeed, I
do not know that the civilisation of French Flanders has yet reached the
point of treating the question 'whether women ought to smoke' as a
practical question, worthy the grave attention of savants and
philosophers. Possibly, if England, like France, had enjoyed the
advantage of sixteen changes in her form of government, and of three
successful foreign invasions, during the past century, questions of this
sort might now subtend no greater an arc in England than they now
subtend in France. And it certainly ought to interest Englishmen to know
that the example of England is freely cited in Lille, Roubaix,
Tourcoing, and other centres of Flemish life and activity, to support
the 'noble and military' amusement of cock-fighting, to which the good
people of these regions are extraordinarily addicted. A law was passed
against this practice under the presidency of Prince Louis Napoleon in
1850, and many attempts have since been made to suppress it--but with
small success. A Republican prefect of the Nord, some years ago,
actually wrote to the President of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals that he would not hesitate to 'enforce the provisions
of the law against cock-fighting whenever the practice seemed to be
likely to become too general!' I do not know that I ever stumbled on a
more delightful recognition of the Eleventh Commandment of demagogism,
'_vox populi vox Dei_!' Naturally, with such encouragement as this, the
sport of late years has been assuming, I am told, a recognised place
among the amusements of the people. Fighting-cocks go into the arena as
champions of the towns in which their owners dwell; and if the feathered
Achilles of Roubaix does the feathered Hector of Tourcoing to death, the
spectators not unfrequently take up the quarrel, divide into two camps,
and have it out handsomely on the spot. These things I note because they
tend to show how difficult it is to develop an ideal civilisation in a
few years by the simple process of forbidding men to teach, or to
believe in, the existence of a Divine Ruler of the Universe.
For the same reason, and without unduly dwelling upon it, I may here
record the statement made to me by an editor of an influential journal
in Lille, that in no city in France has the evil of juvenile
prostitution taken such root as here. When I expressed my surprise at
this, the French law as to the _détournement de mineures_ being at least
as stringent as the English, he replied: 'How can you expect such a law
to be enforced under this Government?' and he then went on to show me in
an old file of his journal an account, now some years old, of the
adventures of a deputy from Versailles in the Palais Royal at Paris.
'Our Republicans,' he said, 'are firm believers in the great principle
of the solidarity of all the party with all the haps and mishaps of
every member of the party.'
A more confirmed pessimist, by the way, than this journalist I have not
seen in France. He was quite convinced that the Republicans would show a
majority in the seven circumscriptions or districts of Lille at the
elections in the autumn, and he criticised very severely the attitude of
the Catholics at Lille in regard to politics. 'They are excellent
people,' he said, 'but they think too much of the souls of the people
and not enough of their votes.'
I ventured to suggest that perhaps the picture which he had himself set
before me of the moral condition of the city of Lille, at least, might
be thought to afford some excuse for this preoccupation of the Catholics
with the spiritual rather than the political interests of the people.
But to this he would not listen for a moment.
'No, no!' he said; 'the first thing to be done for the souls of the
people is to get rid of these fellows at Paris! Are they not paganizing
the country? Here is this new law which is demoralising the army. Why do
they wish to force the seminarists into the service? Is it not avowedly
because they think this will stop the recruiting for the ranks of the
clergy? Why are they attacking the foundations of the magistracy? Is it
not because the French magistrates stand between them and the rights of
the French clergy as French citizens? How far off are we from a revival
of Danton's beautiful doctrine that, in order to consummate the
regeneration of society, all conditions imposed upon the eligibility of
citizens to act as judges ought to be immediately abolished, so that a
tinker, or a butcher, or a bootblack, or a chiffonnier might be made a
French magistrate just as well as a trained student of the laws? As you
know, one of the first things Danton, as Minister of Justice, did was to
carry through the Convention his famous decree making this doctrine law
in France!
'I am worn out,' he said, 'with trying to make our good people here
understand that they must go into the battle-field of politics and put
these fellows out of power at Paris if they mean to prevent France from
falling into absolute anarchy once more. I cannot make them move, and I
believe we shall be beaten in all the seven districts of Lille.'
I am glad to say the event proved that my pessimistic friend was by far
too pessimistic. Of the seven seats to which the arrondissement of Lille
is entitled, four were carried by the Monarchists--in two cases without
an attempt seriously to contest them; and if the seven candidates had
been voted for on a single list, that list would have been elected by
the arrondissement.
The Monarchists threw in the whole arrondissement 53,135 votes, the
Opportunist Republicans 31,019, the Radicals 9,191, and the Socialists
1,011. So that the Monarchists had a clear majority of 11,814 votes over
all the factions of the Republican party put together. In one district
of Lille, the 1st, the Boulangists threw 4,376 votes. If we put these
down, which we have no right to do, as Republican votes, the Monarchists
still show a clear majority of 7,438 in the whole arrondissement of
Lille, and, as I have said, if the representation of France by
arrondissements were really a representation by arrondissements and not
by circumscriptions, the seven hundred thousand people of this great and
prosperous department of North-Eastern France would now be represented
at Paris not by four Monarchists and three Republicans, but by seven
Monarchists. This may serve to show how exceedingly unsafe it is to
assume that the nominal party complexion of the majority in a Chamber
elected as the present French Chamber has been really gives foreign
observers anything like an accurate notion of the state of public
opinion and the drift of popular feeling in France at this time.
A friend to whom I am indebted for an analysis made with great care of
the electoral results, not in this very important department alone, but
throughout France, points out to me the exceedingly significant
difference between the majorities given to the Monarchists and to the
Republican deputies. In the 4th District of Lille, for example, M. des
Rotours, the Monarchist candidate, received 10,555 votes, being the
largest poll by far given to any candidate in the whole arrondissement,
and not one vote was thrown against him. In the 6th District the
Republican candidate was declared to be elected by no more than 199
majority in a total poll of 14,833 votes. In the 3rd District the
Monarchist was elected by a majority of 1,441 votes, in a total poll of
16,081 votes. In the 5th District the Republican was returned by a
majority of 281 votes in a total poll of 15,321 votes. In the 7th
District the Monarchist was returned by a majority of 237 in a total
poll of 14,463 votes. In the 1st District of Hazebrouck the Monarchist
was returned by a majority of 6,861, in a total poll of 11,129 votes,
and in the 2nd District of Hazebrouck by a majority of 5,269 in a total
poll of 10,291!
Hazebrouck is an essentially Flemish town of some 10,000 inhabitants,
and the arrondissement, which comprises 7 cantons and 53 communes,
contains 112,921 inhabitants, is absolutely Flemish. The early
sixteenth-century church of St.-Nicholas at Hazebrouck, with its lofty
and graceful spire, was begun about the time of the first voyage of
Columbus, and is one of the most beautiful extant Flemish buildings of
that time. The people of this arrondissement and their neighbours in the
arrondissement of Dunkirk were almost as famous before 1789 as the Dutch
for their skill as florists and their success in developing all manner
of eccentric varieties of roses, tulips, primroses, and pinks. I do not
know that they ever managed to produce a blue rose, but they came very
near it, and at the present time their rich and level country is gay
with cottage gardens. They are given to sociability also, for the
arrondissement possesses, I am told, at least one cabaret for every 70
inhabitants. But then the cabarets in the department at large average 1
to every 61 inhabitants, and in the thoroughly agricultural
arrondissement of Avesnes they number 1 for every 38 inhabitants. In the
arrondissement of Avesnes, a property of from five to twenty hectares is
called a small farm. In the arrondissement of Hazebrouck, a farmer
cultivating from six to fifty hectares passes for an agriculturist of
the middle class. The people are prosperous, and their hostility to the
Republic seems to have its origin chiefly in the intolerance and
extravagance of the Government. This is the case too, apparently, with
their neighbours in the arrondissement of Dunkirk. The 1st District of
Dunkirk elected a Boulangist Revisionist by a solid vote of 7,821
against 4,806 votes, given not to a Government Republican but to a
Radical, while the 2nd District of Dunkirk elected a Monarchist by a
majority of 5,036 votes in a poll of 11,168.
In the face of such figures as these it seems to me that the friends of
religion and of liberty in the Department of the Nord hardly merit the
reproach put upon them by my pessimistic journalist at Lille of
lukewarmness in the political battle of 1889.
Neither he nor any one can well accuse them of lukewarmness in any other
matter affecting the interests either of religion or of liberty. And I
cannot help hoping that my Northern pessimist may perhaps have
over-estimated the prevalence of juvenile prostitution in Lille as much
as he certainly underestimated the devotion of the Monarchists of Lille
to their political flag. His gloomy prognostications as to the issue at
the polls were probably enough inspired by his thorough knowledge of the
extraordinary preparations made by the authorities for manipulating the
returns. On this point he gave me some particulars which appear to be
borne out by subsequent events. It is curious for example to learn from
the analytical table to which I have already referred in connection with
the elections at Lille, that of the 164 Government candidates returned
as elected at the first balloting of September 23, 87 were returned as
elected by majorities of less than 1,000 votes, while of the 147
Monarchists returned as elected on the same day, only 48 were returned
as elected by majorities of less than 1,000 votes. Of the 164
Republicans, 20, or about one in eight, were returned as elected by
majorities of less than 200 votes; while of the 147 Monarchists, only
11, or about one in thirteen, were returned as elected by similar
majorities. When we remember that the machinery of these elections was
absolutely controlled by the prefects under instructions from M.
Constans, the Minister of the Interior, which were not made public,
this circumstance is certainly very significant. Some of the details
sent me by my analytical correspondent make it still more significant.
In the 2nd District of St.-Nazaire, for example, the Monarchist
candidate was elected without a competitor, receiving 16,084 votes. In
the 1st District of St.-Nazaire the Government candidate was returned by
a majority of no more than 6 votes, the returns giving him 8,458 votes
to 8,452 for his Monarchist opponent. This margin is almost as
suggestive as the majority of 9 votes by which M. Razimbaud, a
Government candidate for the district of St.-Pars, in the Department of
the Hérault, was declared three days after the balloting of October 6 to
have been returned over his Monarchist opponent, the Baron André Reille.
In this same Department of the Hérault, the Prefect and the
Councillors-General returned M. Ménard-Dorian, the Government candidate,
as elected, at Lodève, over M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the distinguished
political economist, by a majority of 67 votes. In this case it seems a
certain number of votes thrown in one commune for both candidates were
set aside, to be annulled for informality. When the returns went up to
the Council for revision, the informal votes cast for M. Leroy-Beaulieu
were declared invalid, the informal votes cast for M. Ménard-Dorian were
declared good and valid, and M. Ménard-Dorian was proclaimed to have
been elected. The Committee of the Chamber reported against the seating
of M. Ménard-Dorian, and tried to have this report accepted, but as I
write the Chamber has not accepted it, and the odds are that M.
Leroy-Beaulieu, who, though a Moderate Republican, has made himself
obnoxious to the Government by telling the truth about the financial
condition of France, will be kept out of the seat which it is tolerably
plain that he was elected to fill.
It is difficult for an Englishman, even for an American, to understand
the cynical coolness with which things of this sort are done in the
French Republic of the present time, and not very easy to understand the
apathetic way in which, when done, they are accepted by the French
public. There seems to be little doubt that in England of late years
ballot-boxes have been 'stuffed' only by the stupidity of the voters,
and not by the ingenious rascality of the political managers. I wish I
could with an easy conscience say the same thing of my own country. But
even in the United States deliberate tampering with the returns of a
political election has not, I think, been practised since the evil days
of Reconstruction at the South with the calm disregard of appearances
shown by the Government managers during the legislative contest of this
year, 1889, in France; and certainly there has been nothing known in the
Congress of the United States, since the days of Reconstruction, at all
comparable with the systematic invalidation by the majority in the
French Chamber of the elections of troublesome members since it
assembled on November 12. In the cases of General Boulanger and of M.
Naquet, the latter of whom resigned his seat in the Senate to stand as a
Boulangist candidate for the Chamber, this invalidation was carried out
openly as a party measure and precisely in the spirit of the famous or
infamous resolution which Robespierre made the 'Section of the Pikes'
adopt, to the effect that the electors of Paris must be protected
against their own incapacity to choose 'true patriots' by having the
'true patriots' chosen for them. If this be one of the 'principles of
1789,' it must be admitted that the Third Republic is consistently and
courageously acting upon it. It has undoubted advantages, but it has a
tendency, perhaps, to put in question the value of what are commonly
called representative institutions. Strike out of the theory of
representative institutions the right divine of the people to choose the
wrong men, and what is left of it?
At the close of the election of September 22, 1889, in Paris, the major
of the 2nd or Clignancourt District of the eighteenth arrondissement of
the Department of the Seine declared that General Boulanger had received
7,816 votes out of 13,611 cast, and that he was therefore elected. Of
his competitors, one M. Joffrin, described as a 'Possibilist,' had
received 5,507 votes; M. Jules Roques, a Socialist, had received 359
votes, and for a citizen bearing the gloomy but respectable name of M.
Cercueil, or 'M. Coffin,' one vote had been cast. Obviously General
Boulanger was the man whom a majority of the voters of Clignancourt
desired to represent them. If General Boulanger for their own sake could
not be allowed to represent them, why not M. Cercueil? They certainly
did not choose M. Cercueil to represent them. But as certainly they did
not choose M. Joffrin to represent them.
What really happened? The Prefect of the Seine, on hearing the result at
Clignancourt, notified the Minister of the Interior, and orders were at
once given to correct this egregious error into which the voters of
Clignancourt had fallen as to what their true interest required. It was
probably found that an 'informality' had occurred in certain communes,
and that through this 2,494 votes must be annulled. News of this
discovery was instantly sent to the Parisian newspapers. As it was
supposed that they would give M. Joffrin a plurality of the votes to be
recognised, sundry newspapers actually printed the name of M. Joffrin at
the head of the list of candidates in the place usually accorded by a
really enlightened press to the elect of universal suffrage.
Unfortunately the official calculator is not of the blood of Bidder. It
was found at the last moment that enough votes had not been 'annulled'
to put M. Joffrin at the head of the poll, so that his name actually
appears in sundry Parisian morning papers of September 23, first indeed
in position, but over against it are recorded 5,500 votes, while the
name of General Boulanger comes second with 5,880 votes! Clearly an
awkwardness! In the _Journal des Débats_, which is a serious Republican
journal of character, the election of General Boulanger by 7,816 votes
was quietly announced, with a postscript to the effect that 'the
Prefecture of the Seine' gave a different result, 'arising from the
circumstance that in certain sections 2,494 votes bearing the name of
General Boulanger had been asserted to be null and void,' and that,
therefore, there would be a second election, or 'ballottage,' on October
6!
There could hardly be a more pregnant commentary than this upon the
candid admission made by the most respectable and influential Republican
journal in Paris, the _Temps_, on October 17, 1885, that these 'second
elections,' or 'ballottages,' are simply a device by which the Central
Government at Paris is enabled to 'correct' the errors perpetrated by
the voters of France at the elections which precede them. 'To learn the
true sentiments of the country,' said the _Temps_, 'we must consult the
elections of the 4th. On that day _universal suffrage was allowed_ to
choose freely between the opposing parties and policies. The vote of
to-morrow will not be as clear and precise, for it will be determined by
_tactical necessities and by all sorts of combinations_.'
Perfectly true! But, this being true, what becomes of 'popular
sovereignty' and of the divine quality of the rights derived from
universal suffrage as contrasted with rights derived from inheritance,
or, for that matter, with rights derived from a dice-box or the
shuffling of a pack of cards? Considering what the usual origin is of
'tactical necessities' in politics, and what forces determine political
'combinations of all sorts,' is it going too far to say that the odds,
so far as public interests are concerned, are in favour of the dice-box
or the pack of cards--provided the dice be not loaded or the cards
specially packed?
Some years ago, in my own country, a well-known Austrian dined with me
one night, just before he sailed for Europe after a tour in the United
States. We spoke of a public man just then filling a very responsible
position at Washington, to which he had been named after a severely
contested and very costly election. 'I thought him a very pleasant,
intelligent man,' said my Austrian guest, 'but it struck me that you
spend too much time and trouble and money on getting just such men into
such places. We get very much the same calibre of men for the same kind
of work much more economically and easily by the simple process of
marrying a prince to a princess.'
What I have seen and learned this year of the working of the electoral
machinery in France under the Third Republic inclines me, as I have
already said, to think that the Catholic children of light in Lille and
in French Flanders generally may be doing better work both for Religion
and for Liberty than my pessimistic journalist was disposed before the
elections to believe. If they had given more time and thought and money
to 'tactical necessities' and 'political combinations,' and less to the
social and spiritual interests of the land in which they live, the
results even of the elections might perhaps have been less satisfactory
to them. For, as I have shown, the strength of the Monarchist vote in
this region proved to be much greater than my pessimist thought it
would be; and the Republicans of the Third Republic did a deal of
canvassing for the Monarchists by making it very hard for men who love
religion and liberty to vote for Republican candidates.
Lord Beaconsfield's saying, that the world is governed by the people of
whom it hears the least, is certainly not less true of the Catholic
Church than it is of the world. The Catholic stock in French Flanders is
as vigorous and full of sap as in Belgium or in Holland. It is
interesting to hear educated people talking glibly in London or Paris
about the decay of the Christian religion in the same breath in which
they profess their unbounded admiration of the heroism of Father Damien.
It was through no act or wish of Father Damien that the world at large
came to know his name, or to take account of a work which was done not
to be seen of men. He was simply a Flemish Catholic, doing what he
believed to be the will of God.
Throughout the broad rich plains of the great Department of the Nord,
and in its crowded busy towns and cities, this Catholic faith is
everywhere to be seen and felt--to be felt rather than to be seen in its
fruits of charity, self-denial, and devout self-sacrifice.
Nowhere in France is public charity, I am told, so extensively and
efficiently organised, and the demands upon public charity are
exceptionally great. The department is very rich and very prosperous,
but it contains, like all frontier regions, a large floating population;
and one of the best-informed men I met in Lille, a large landed
proprietor in one of the wealthiest communes of the department, told me
that there are probably more families or tribes of hereditary mendicants
scattered over French Flanders than are to be found in any other French
province.
These are not nomads addicted to wandering off into other regions, but
rather a kind of Northern lazzaroni. They do a little work occasionally,
but as little and as seldom as possible. They are inveterate poachers,
and the more industrious of them are habitual smugglers. In their way of
prosecuting this industry, however, they show their fine natural
instinct for avoiding labour. The most profitable trade they drive is in
tobacco. This they get over the frontier from Belgium, and to get it
they train a certain breed of dogs. They tie parcels of tobacco around
the throats of these dogs, and then proceed to have the dogs well
thrashed by one of their number dressed in the Custom-house uniform. A
few lessons of this sort suffice to develop in the dogs a strong
association of ideas between the odour of tobacco and the thwacks of a
cudgel, and a dog well educated in this way may be trusted, after he has
got his cargo in Belgium, to reach his master's den unvisited by the
French _douane_. Baudrillart confirms this account. He puts the number
of habitual applicants, largely from this mendicant class, for public
relief in the department at from two hundred to two hundred and fifty
thousand a year. Out of the 662 communes in the department there were
only twenty in 1888 without a 'Bureau de Bienfaisance,' and the
department spends five millions of francs a year on its charities,
independently of nearly twice that amount expended upon hospitals,
asylums, dispensaries, and the like, by private benevolence. Under the
French law, private donors can found charities to be attached to the
public 'Bureau de Bienfaisance,' and administered by the public
officers, and one of the many evil effects of the war declared against
Catholic France by the Third Republic is that it affects such charities
very seriously.
Even under the Empire trouble came of the occasional division of one
commune into two or more communes, a question then arising as, for
example, in a famous case of the communes of St.-Joseph and St.-Martin
in the Loire, about the division between the poor of the two communes of
three hospital beds left to the 'Bureau de Bienfaisance' of the original
commune of St.-Martin. It was easier for the military saint himself to
divide his cloak with the shivering beggar than for the commune which
bore his name to divide three beds into two equal portions! At Lille,
two or three years ago, a lady, Mme. Austin Laurand, the widow of M.
Laurand, in accordance with her husband's will, gave 30,000 francs to
the 'Bureau de Bienfaisance' of the city, the income thereof to be
applied, under the supervision of three commissioners, to encouraging
habits of thrift among the apprentices of Lille. Two hundred bank-books
of five francs each are annually given to apprentices in the first two
years of their apprenticeship, and the rest of the income is to be given
in prizes each year to those of the bank-book holders who shall be shown
to have been the most careful and thrifty in managing the results of
their labour during the year.
A law passed in 1874, before the 'true Republicans' of Gambetta and
Ferry came into power, provides for a medical inspection and record of
newly-born children, and this law puts infants, whenever it may be found
necessary, under proper hygienic conditions. It has been nowhere so
energetically carried out as in the Nord. Of course, such a law as this
flies directly in the face of the great gospel of the 'survival of the
fittest.' But though that gospel was introduced to Paris on the stage as
one of the curiosities of the Centennial Exposition of 1889, it has made
little progress as yet in Catholic France. Even at the theatres in
Paris, I am glad to say, the popular instinct still regulates the
_queue_ on principles quite inconsistent with the Darwinian maxims of
'every man for himself,' and 'the devil take the hindmost.' It will be
an evil day for invalids and cripples bitten with the drama when the
'struggle for life' comes to be logically developed into the right of
the strongest men to get first to the ticket office!
Throughout the Department of the Nord, primary schools exist for the
children who are taken in charge at their birth by public benevolence,
and those to whom they are confided are obliged to see that the children
attend these schools from the age of six to the age of twelve years.
Under the influence of the Church acting upon the naturally sociable and
gregarious temperament of the Flemish race, mutual aid societies have
become very numerous of late years in the Nord. A hundred and fifty-two
such societies now exist in the arrondissement of Lille alone. These
numbered, in 1888, 7,249 honorary members and 35,270 paying members, and
their assets were stated at about 3,000,000 francs. Only 3,649 women,
however, were enrolled on their lists. Is this a confirmation, I wonder,
of the theory entertained by Mr. Emerson and other philosophers, that
woman is not a 'clubbable' animal?
Putting this aside, however, for the moment as a more or less 'academic'
question, it is of interest to note the very considerable development
during the last few years of the principle of association among the
working-men and producers of France, under the influence of the Church
and of Conservative public men like M. Welche, one of the
extra-parliamentary Ministers of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta, who did
good service here at Lille as Prefect of the Department of the Nord, and
who has made the French law of 1881 affecting 'professional
syndicates,' so useful throughout the agricultural world of France.
It is one of the organic statutes of the Society of 'Foreseers of the
Future,' or 'Prévoyants de l'Avenir,' that all political and religious
discussions are forbidden at the meetings of the society.'
This society was established at Paris on December 12, 1880. On February
23, 1881, it was authorised to act as a 'Civil Society,' by the Minister
of the Interior and the Prefect of Police. Its object is to 'ensure to
all its members who shall have co-operated in maintaining it for twenty
years, the first necessaries of life.' I shall not attempt here to go in
detail into the statutes and organisation of the society. Suffice it to
say that the statutes are brief, clear, and sensible, and that the
organisation appears to be eminently practical. The members, to the
number of whom no limit is set, the only indispensable condition being
that they shall be in good health and actively employed in some trade or
calling, pay an entrance fee of two francs, and a monthly due of one
franc. This monthly due must be paid in advance, and a fine of 25
centimes is imposed for every month in arrears. Each member receives a
book containing the statutes, which establishes his title to its
benefits, and for which he pays 50 centimes. Donations may be received,
and under the authority of the officers entertainments may be given, the
profits of which go to the general fund. Any respectable person, no
matter what may be his calling, may become a member, if he has attained
the age of fifteen years, and women are not excluded. 'Having the same
duties,' say the statutes, 'they have the same rights,' but, despite
this, it is provided that women who are members shall not be fined if
they fail to attend the general meeting on the second Sunday in January
in each year, whereas men in the same case shall be mulcted in the sum
of one franc, unless they shall have previously by letter excused
themselves.
Every member at the expiration of twenty full years of membership shall
be entitled to his share of the interest earned during the twentieth
year of his membership by the property of the society, the funds of
which can only be invested in the three or five per cent. funds of the
French nation. His regular contribution to the society will still go on,
but he will receive his share of the interest earned thereafter
regularly every three months. Should a pensioner die, the year's
interest due to him shall be paid over to his heirs or assigns. The
pension cannot be transferred or alienated, and the relations of a
pensioner have no claim upon the amount of the payments made by him to
the society. Should a member become an invalid, incapable of work, after
fully paying up his dues to the society during five years, he may demand
to be kept upon the books as a full member, and as such he will be
entitled to his pension at the end of twenty years. The society can only
be dissolved by a unanimous vote of the members at a general meeting;
and if so dissolved the members must choose another society as nearly as
possible resembling this, to which the property of the dissolved society
shall be transferred.
The funds for current expenses of the society can never exceed 1,500
francs. This society, as I have said, was founded in 1880. Its success
has been really phenomenal.
On January 1, 1882, it comprised 757 members, and its capital amounted
to 6,237 francs. On January 18, 1886, it consisted of 15,008 members,
and had a capital invested in French consols of 361,003 fr. 99 c. On
April 1, 1889, it numbered 59,932 members, divided into 340 sections,
and it possessed an invested capital of 1,541,868 fr. 26 c.! Of course
the Tontine principle enters into the system, and it would be
interesting to compute the probable pensions in 1902 of so many of the
757 persons who were members of the society in 1882 as may then be
living to claim their share of the interest then earned by the then
capital of the society. The minuteness, precision, and practical common
sense with which the statutes of this organisation have been drawn up
and provision made in its regulations against all the probable
difficulties to be encountered in carrying it on, gives one a very
favourable notion of the business capacity and of the character of the
French working classes. No conditions as to sex or nationality are
imposed upon membership, the only necessary qualification being that the
person applying to be admitted shall be actively employed in some way,
be domiciled in France, and be sixteen full years of age. It strikes me
that organisations of this sort are more likely to promote a practical
solution of the Labour question than combinations to secure the passage
of laws fixing the number of hours for which a man shall be allowed to
work.
The Church has taken an active part in fostering the development of
these mutual aid societies throughout this great department, and
particularly in Lille and Roubaix. The disasters of the Franco-German
war gave a great impulse to them. These disasters did more to strengthen
and deepen than all the vulgar violence of the pseudo-scientific and
pseudo-literary atheism of parliamentary Paris has yet done to weaken
the religious sentiment in France, and the French Catholics cannot be
cited to illustrate Aubrey de Vere's noble saying that 'worse than
wasted weal is wasted woe.'
I spent a most interesting morning at Lille with M. Grimbert in visiting
the buildings and the collections of the great Catholic University which
has been founded here to meet the assault of M. Ferry and his allies on
the higher education in France. This Catholic University has been
endowed and is maintained entirely by the private liberality of the
Catholics of the Department of the Nord, and by the revenues it derives
from the students who attend its courses. It is a thoroughly equipped
university of the first rank. The Rector, Monseigneur Baunard, is a
Roman prelate, and of the two vice-rectors, one is a prelate and the
other a canon. These, with the Deans of the Faculties, and five
professors elected from the corps of instructors, constitute the
Academic Senate. The Administrative Council comprises the Archbishop of
Cambrai, the Bishop of Arras (to the benevolence of one of whose
predecessors France is indebted for the education which enabled
Robespierre to avenge upon the Church and upon his country what in one
of his letters he calls 'the intolerable slavery of an obligation
received'), the Bishop of Lydda, the Chancellor of the University, and
the Rector. The Theological Faculty comprises a dean and nine
professors; the Law Faculty a dean, the Comte de Vareilles-Sommières,
and thirteen professors. One of these gentlemen, M. Arthaut, was so kind
as to receive M. Grimbert and myself, and to show us over the whole
institution. The Medical Faculty comprises a dean, Dr. Desplats, and
twenty-three professors; the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, a dean,
Dr. Margerie, and seven professors; the Faculty of Sciences, a dean, Dr.
Chautard, and nine professors.
The buildings of the University now occupy two sides of an immense
square in one of the finest quarters of Lille, and when fully completed
will occupy the whole square. As they now stand they are by far the
most striking edifices in Lille, and would do honour to any city in
Europe. The area covered by them, I should say, is larger than that
covered by the University of London, and certainly, from the
architectural point of view, they need fear no comparison with the
London establishment. The library, which is admirably arranged, already
contains about 80,000 volumes, and the apparatus of the scientific
schools is admittedly better than that of any institution in France. The
outlay already made here exceeds 11,000,000 fr., or about 240,000_l._
sterling, all of which has been contributed freely by the Catholics of
this region.
On the face of things it appears to me that the existence of this
University is somewhat inconsistent with the notion that 'the religious
sentiment is dead in France.' The classes are now attended by between
four and five hundred students, for whose accommodation three 'family
houses' have been already built, in which students are lodged at an
expense of from 1,000 to 1,400 fr. a year, and when the academic
buildings now in process of construction are completed, more than a
thousand students can be thus lodged. Two dispensaries, a Maternity
Hospital, under the charge of Sisters of Charity of St.-Vincent de Paul,
together with the large Hospital de la Charité, are directly connected
with the clinical service of the medical faculty, and are so
administered as to render the most important services to the industrious
population of the city. The Electrical Department of the Faculty of
Sciences is particularly well equipped, and one of the assistants in
charge of this department, who showed us some improvements recently
devised here in the working apparatus, surprised me by the extent and
minute accuracy of his information as to all the most recent progress
made in the applications of electricity to machinery, and to the arts on
both sides of the Atlantic.
I was not surprised, however, to learn from M. Arthaut that the
astonishing prosperity of this great institution is viewed with extreme
dissatisfaction by the authorities at Paris, and particularly by the
University of France, which has been confirmed again under the Third
Republic in the monopoly of academic privileges, of which it was very
sensibly deprived by the Assembly under the Government of the
Marshal-Duke of Magenta. By way of expressing this dissatisfaction with
dignity and emphasis, the Government of the Third Republic actually
forbids free Catholic universities to use the title of universities. M.
Ferry's Article 7 not being yet law in this best of all possible French
Republics, Catholics cannot be prevented from spending their own money
in founding institutions which are really universities. But, at all
events, they can be forbidden to give any one of them the title of a
university, that being reserved for the State establishment, which, from
Paris, extends its academic sway all over France.
I called the attention of M. Arthaut to the fact that a great Catholic
University has been this year founded in the capital of the Republic of
the United States, and that the President of the Republic, himself a
Protestant, not only attended the ceremonies of the foundation, but made
a brief speech, in which he expressed his best wishes for its progress
and prosperity. 'That, I am afraid,' said M. Arthaut, 'is a kind of
republic which we are not likely to see established in France.'
To measure the significance of this Catholic work in behalf of liberty
and religion here at Lille, it must be borne in mind that the very men
who are building it up with such splendid liberality and enterprise are
compelled by the iniquitous laws of the Third Republic to bear their own
share as taxpayers in supporting here at Lille another academic
institution of a similar scope, but of less importance, under the direct
control of the University of France, from all share in the
administration of which religion and the ministers of religion are as
rigidly excluded as that refugee of the First French Revolution, Stephen
Girard, intended they should be from the college which he founded at
Philadelphia. Of course the same thing is true of the Catholics all over
France. Out of their pockets must come nine-tenths of the enormous sum,
as yet quite incalculable, but certainly running far up in the hundreds
of millions of francs which is still to be expended by the Third
Republic upon its 'scholastic palace,' and the ever-increasing army of
'lay teachers,' male and female, whom it is yearly turning out of the
educational institutions of France to seek the employment which a vast
majority of them cannot possibly hope to find in the public schools, the
lyceums and 'faculties' of the nation.
On this point a Councillor-General whom I met here at Lille dwelt with
very grave emphasis. 'We are educating here in France,' he said to me,
'hundreds of young men and young women every year under false pretences
to enter a profession already overcrowded. For every post which now
exists or which can be created within the next ten years in the
educational system of these revolutionists at Paris, we are turning out
at least a hundred applicants each year of each sex, who must
necessarily be thrown upon the public. What will become of them? The
young men will go into Nihilism, as young men of the same sort do in
Russia; the young women will go upon the street. Only the other day at
Paris, the Government advertised a competition for about 70 positions in
the telegraphic service. How many young women applied? More than 800!
What is to become of the 730 unsuccessful competitors? And what right
has the State to flood the market thus, in advance of the necessities of
the country, and at the cost of the taxpayers, with male and female
teachers, any more than with carpenters, or with surgeons, or with
confectioners?'
One circumstance connected with the development of this great Catholic
University at Lille (as an American I permit myself to give the
institution its proper title) is of special significance. It is not the
only institution of the kind which has been called into existence in
France since the Third Republic began its war against religion in 1880.
There is a Free Catholic institution at Lyons, which consists of three
faculties under the administration of a company founded to receive and
administer all sums given or bequeathed to organise the institutes. The
Archbishop of Lyons is Chancellor of this institution, which has a dean
and seven professors of theology, a dean and eighteen professors of law,
with a secretary and librarian of that faculty, a dean and seven
professors of letters, a dean and nine professors of science. There are
similar institutions also at Angers and at Toulouse. All of these are
freely supported by the private subscriptions of Catholic France, as is
also the great Catholic Institute of Paris in the Rue Vaugirard, so
admirably conducted by Monseigneur d'Hulst, the Vicar-General of Paris.
Thanks to the law of July 12, 1875, and to the stand made by the friends
of liberty and religion when the law of March 18, 1880, was finally
enacted, the students of the Faculty of Law in these Catholic institutes
still have the right to present themselves with the certificates of
their several institutes at the public examinations for the diplomas of
the baccalaureate, the licentiate and the doctorate in law, and for the
certificate of capacity in the law, necessary to enable the successful
candidates to practise the legal profession in France. To maintain the
efficiency of the free Catholic institutions, the Catholics of France
have spared during the last few years neither labour nor money. More
than 17,000,000 francs have been contributed during that period to
establish the Catholic educational system in Paris alone, and more than
2,000,000 francs are yearly subscribed there to keep it up. As I have
already said, the University here at Lille represents an expenditure
during the same period of more than 11,000,000 francs and a still larger
prospective expenditure.
It would be interesting, if it were possible, to learn how much out of
their own pockets the propagandists of unbelief have expended during
this same decade upon the irreligious education of the children of their
countrymen! Were the truth attainable, the amount expended by them would
be found to bear to the amount received by them from their propaganda of
unbelief much less than the proportion of Falstaff's 'pennyworth of
bread' to his 'intolerable deal of sack!' While the Catholics of France
have been giving millions to defend the right of the French people to
protect the faith of their children, these men have been expending
hundreds of millions of the money of Catholic taxpayers upon school
buildings, the contracts for erecting which have been controlled by
themselves for their friends; they have been finding places in the
public educational service for their friends, dependants and allies, and
they have been comfortably drawing large salaries themselves from the
Treasury.
Set over against these incontrovertible facts, the fact, as
incontrovertible, for which I am indebted here to M. Grimbert, that of
the millions expended in defence of liberty and religion here at Lille,
a very large proportion has been contributed by one single Catholic
citizen of this ancient Flemish city, who has consecrated his life and
his fortune to his faith in the spirit of the earliest Christian times,
and I think my readers will agree with me, not only that the religious
sentiment is not dead in France, but that it never was more living and
more active in France, nor more full of promise for the social and
political regeneration of this great people.
I shall not run the risk of offending this good Catholic by naming him,
though his name and his work are an open secret for every intelligent
person in Lille. Suffice it that, coming of an old Flemish stock and
bearing an old Flemish name, this citizen (the title of citizen means
something respectable in these staunch old free cities) of Lille years
ago insisted to his brother, who was his associate in the ownership and
management of one of the largest commercial houses of this region, that
they should take regularly into the partnership account of their
business, for one-third of their annual profits, 'the work of God.' This
was done; and from that day to this the proportion thus set apart of
their profits has been regularly devoted to the service of the Church
and of charity. But this is not all. The brother, of whom I speak with
the reticence and the reverence due to a type of character not
absolutely common in this age of the Golden Calf, has systematically
limited his own personal expenses during the whole of these years to a
few thousands of francs, devoting all the rest of his income to
religious and benevolent objects.
I should really like to see a calm business-like estimate made of the
economical advantages likely to result to a country from extinguishing
at an expense of several hundreds of millions of francs a year the faith
which gives birth to characters such as this.
I visited, in one of the suburbs of Lille, the extensive manufactories
of another well-known house, the heads of which have worked out and
established an excellent system of 'mutual assistance' among their
employees, and built up a large and well-ordered _cité ouvrière_ on a
plan substantially resembling that of those which I saw at St.-Gobain
and at Anzin. A house for young girls established by this firm, very
near their main factory, struck me as particularly admirable. It is
under the management of the Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul, who fill the
place with a pervading spirit of cheerfulness and animation, quite
indescribable. The dormitories were the perfection of neatness. The
gymnastic hall and the grounds were in apple-pie order, and as the lower
part of the large and airy building erected by the firm for this
domicile is used during the day as a kind of crèche by the married women
who leave their young children here while they are busy in the factory,
the whole place was alive with merry and laughing little imps. I heard
of other establishments of the same kind at and near Roubaix on a still
larger scale. These I unfortunately had not time to visit. Under the
Empire in 1865 a few energetic citizens of Lille induced the
municipality to guarantee five per cent, interest on a capital of
2,000,000 francs for the establishment of a company to construct, let
and sell houses for working-men under certain conditions as to the
isolation of each house and as to its proper ventilation and drainage.
The rental of these houses can never exceed eight per cent, on the cost
of erection, those of one story never to cost more than 2,400 francs,
and those of two stories more than 3,000 francs, including the cost of
the land. The houses are built of brick with foundations and sills of
Soignies stone. These were the original statutes, but the company is now
allowed to build single-story houses on a larger scale with cellars,
which may be rented for 400 francs a year or bought for 5,000 francs--a
first payment in the case of purchase to be made of 500 francs, and
after that the money to be paid in instalments of 40 francs a month over
thirteen years. All the wells and pumps are supplied by the
municipality.
The municipality also makes an annual grant in aid of a very useful
charity, founded under the Empire, and largely developed by private
gifts and legacies, called the 'Invalids of Labour.' This now secures
pensions to nearly a hundred workmen, disabled by serious accidents
incurred in their labour or through some effort to help others in peril.
It also gives temporary assistance in less severe cases. But the most
characteristic institution which I found flourishing at Lille has a
history worth telling. It strikingly illustrates the development under
the old _régime_ in France and Flanders of those public works of
benevolence of which we are so often and so audaciously asked to believe
that they had no existence before the benign 'principles of 1789'
bedewed the hearts of men, and it not less strikingly illustrates the
demoralising and destructive influence upon all manner of sound and
useful establishments throughout France of the headlong and reckless
administration of public affairs by the successive 'governments' of the
First Republic.
In the year 1607, on September 27, a worthy Catholic citizen,
Bartholomew Masurel, _bourgeois et manant_ of the city of Lille, came
before two notaries, and declared 'that to succour the poor people of
Lille in their necessities, and also for the salvation of his own soul
and the souls of his predecessors and successors, he wished to establish
a _Mont-de-Piété_, where money loans should be made without usury or
interest, and not as they were made by the Lombards.'
To this end Bartholomew Masurel gave, by a donation between living
persons, and irrevocable, to take effect after his death, all his lands,
fiefs, and houses which he owned at Lille, and in his country place, and
the value of which might be estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand
_livres parisis_, or in money of our day nominally 300,000 francs. In
fact, the gift, I am told, represented about half a million francs of
our days.
But the good '_bourgeois et manant_' could not hold out till his death
against the appeal which the sight of 'the poor people of Lille in their
necessities' daily made to his kindly heart. So in 1609 he agreed with
the Mayor, that he would turn over all these possessions at once to the
magistrates to be applied to the purpose he meant to effect, the
magistrates agreeing to secure to him an annuity out of the funds of the
city of 1,200 florins, or about 1,562 francs of our time. Thereupon he
went to work with the authorities to found his charity. From his
statutes we learn that foundations of this kind were then common in
French Flanders. He models them, as he says, upon 'those of similar
foundations in our neighbouring towns and elsewhere.'
No loans were to be made except to '_manants et habitants de la Ville
Taille et Banlieue de Lille_,' and only to 'poor and necessitous persons
who, not being able to gain their livelihood, were forced to borrow
money;' nor were loans to be made to 'persons prodigal, of evil life,
and accustomed to squander their goods.' For this due order was to be
taken by the magistrates. At first the loans were limited to 24 florins
(30 francs) to one person; the lowest sum loaned being 20 patars, or 1
fr. 25 c. of our times. So well had Bartholomew Masurel organised his
charity, and so many good Christian souls swelled its funds by gifts and
bequests, that within a year the maximum loan was raised to 50 florins,
in 1669 to 100 florins, and in 1745 it was fixed at 120 florins, or 150
francs. At this figure it stood when the First Republic began its
experiments. The fund was then known as 'the true Mont-de-Piété,' and
was carried on under letters patent granted in 1609 by the Archduke
Albert of Austria. When Lille became French in 1667, Louis XIV had to
recognise and confirm all the rights and titles of this benevolent
institution.
It had rendered great service to the industries of Lille during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of the funds enabling
the managers to lend sums to weavers on their goods when trade fell off,
and so relieving them from the necessity of parting with them for less
than their value. Just before the Revolution the Masurel Fund amounted
to 455,454 francs, of which 256,627 francs were in cash or in loans, and
the rest in state funds and houses, yielding a revenue of 8,307 francs.
On January 23, 1794, the National Convention coolly ordered that all
'objects of necessity deposited in any Mont-de-Piété for an amount not
exceeding 20 francs should be at once restored without payment to their
owners, and all such objects deposited for amounts below 50 and above 20
francs on payment, without interest, of the amount beyond 20 francs!'
This 'liberal' legislation had been preceded on August 24, 1793, by
another act of spoliation which ordered 'the payment of the capital of
all sums at interest to be made in _assignats_, and the conversion of
all the debts of the Communes, and of the suppressed public
organisations throughout France into State debts.
In consequence of these measures the whole property of the Masurel fund
was found in 1803, when Napoleon began to overhaul the chaos to which
the lunatics and plunderers of the Republic had reduced France, to
amount to no more than 10,408 francs in real estate. This was the way in
which the 'principles of 1789' developed the benevolent institutions of
France, and introduced a new era!
The authorities of Lille had the good sense and forecast thereupon to
suspend the operations of the true _Mont-de-Piété_, and to set about
restoring the fund as far and as fast as was possible. The Christian
institution of Masurel had fared better than the 'Lombards.' This latter
establishment had to be formally closed in 1796, as it was then found to
have no more than 86,000 francs in its treasury, and this in
_assignats_!
In 1857 the Prefect of the Nord reported that the Masurel fund might be
safely devoted anew to the purposes of its founder. It then amounted to
249,644 fr. By an imperial decree of 1860, all that remained of the
property of the 'Lombards' was amalgamated with the Masurel fund, and
the institution was put under the direction of the official
Mont-de-Piété of Lille, but with a separate system of accounts, and
began its operations again on the lines laid down by its founder in
1607. It has since worked so well that the maximum of the loans
reimbursable, without interest, has risen from 30 francs in 1860 to 200
francs.
In 1869, the maximum being 100 francs, the number of engagements and
renewals was 10,933--the money loaned amounted to 75,460 fr. 50 c., in
loans averaging 9fr. 14 c., and the capital of the fund to 257,231 fr.
27 c. In 1888, the maximum being 200 fr., there were 16,000 engagements
and renewals, the loans amounted to 136,663 francs in average loans of
8 fr. 54 c., and the capital of the fund to 334,726 fr. 57 c.
Of the 'similar foundations in other towns' which moved the pious
emulation of Bartholomew Masurel nearly three centuries ago, how many, I
wonder, still exist!
And with them how many other monuments of the Christian civilisation of
Flanders and of France were 'improved' off the face of the earth by the
'regenerators' of 1792?
It was not by accident that I learned of the Masurel Mont-de-Piété; but
when I went to the Municipal Secretary to ask him for some official
account of its condition and its operation, that courteous functionary
looked at me for a moment with astonishment and then said, 'I am
delighted to give you what you want, and I assure you that, with one
exception, you are the only foreigner who has ever asked for this
information in the last seven years! The other was the English
Protestant clergyman here in Lille, who happens to live or has his
chapel, I am not sure which, just opposite the Mont-de-Piété!'
I ought not to speak however of the Masurel foundation as 'unique.' I
hope there may be many more men like the good Bartholomew Masurel in our
time, and in other countries besides France, than we wot of. But the
only modern institution of a kindred spirit with this of which I have
any present cognisance began its career in England only fifteen years
ago, and was founded curiously enough like the Masurel fund by men of
the Low Countries. This is the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' of the
Netherlands Benevolent Society of London. At a dinner given at the
Cannon Street Hotel on May 12, 1874, to celebrate the twenty-fifth year
of the accession of King William III under the presidency of the Dutch
Minister in England, the Count de Bylandt, the guests in a glow of
loyalty and good-fellowship proposed to raise a contribution to be spent
in the purchase of some handsome memorial of the occasion. A happy
inspiration came to the Chairman, and he suggested to his countrymen
that the best of all possible memorials of such an occasion would be to
establish a fund for the relief of poor and worthy Netherlanders in
London and to give it the name of their King. The suggestion was adopted
by acclamation, and the result the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' from which,
as I find by examining its statutes and its records, gratuitous loans,
precisely identical in their object and under conditions not essentially
different, are made to deserving Hollanders in London.
The 'fonds' is connected with a society doing the usual work of all such
foreign benevolent societies in London. But it is a special fund, and as
I learn from the Annual Report of the Society for January 1889, it has
so far been administered with entire success, and with the result of
enabling not a few honest and industrious Hollanders stranded in London
to make a fair and prosperous start in life. That the fund is
administered in the true practical spirit of the old Low Country
benevolence, and its advantages appreciated as they ought to be, appears
from the statement made by the Treasurer, Mr. Maas, in the Report for
1889, that the number of loans is increasing and the number of donations
decreasing. In 1888 371_l._ were loaned as against 185_l._ in 1887, and
247_l._ given away as against 382_l._ in 1887. I observe, too, that the
Lord Mayor of London, Sir Polydore de Keyser, gave at this annual
meeting as his reason for joining the society which administers this
fund that it had the courage to spend 251_l._ in excess of its assured
income rather than send away the good which came to its door to be
done.