IN THE MARNE
REIMS
No city in France has more to lose and less to gain from the triumph of
the Third Republic over historic France than this ancient, rich, and
royal city of Reims.
The triumph of the Third Republic on the lines laid down by M.
Challemel-Lacour in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means
the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the
religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of
all its significance. It would be to filch from the city of St.-Rémi and
of Clovis, of Urban II. and of Jeanne d'Arc, its great name--a robbery
that surely would not enrich the Third Republic, but that would leave
Reims poor indeed!
Of course it is possible that the laicised, unbaptized, and atheistic
French citizen of the future may come to regard the hegira of M.
Gambetta from Paris to Tours in a balloon, and the occupation of Tonkin,
as events of greater importance to mankind than the creation of France
by Clotilde and Clovis, or the rescue of France from conquest and
dismemberment by the pious peasant-girl of Domrémy, or the rolling back
of Islam from the domination of the world by Urban II. Heaven forbid
that I should assume to set any limit to the things which a truly
scientific unbeliever is likely to believe!
But while men still abide in the thick darkness of the Catholic faith,
or even in the penumbral twilight of Protestant Christianity, I do not
see how Reims is to be one bit the better, materially or morally, for
the extinction of the religious sentiment in France.
The arrondissement of Reims contains very nearly 200,000 people, of whom
considerably more than one-third inhabit the city itself. A very large
proportion of these are employed in the numerous factories which
flourish here, and many more in the various industries connected with
the incessantly growing commerce in those sparkling wines which have
made the name of this ancient province synonymous with luxury and gaiety
in the remotest corners of the world. Though Épernay is the real
headquarters of this commerce, two or three of the most important houses
connected with it are, and long have been, established at Reims, and
some of the most remarkable of the vast cellars excavated in the chalk,
in which these sparkling wines are stored throughout the Department of
the Marne, are here to be seen. Here too, at least as well as at Épernay
or Châlons, acquaintance may be made, at the right time and in the right
places, with certain vintages of Champagne which seldom or never find
their way into the channels of trade, not so much because of their
rarity and high cost as because of their exceeding delicacy. It is
almost impossible, for example, to find even at Paris the finest quality
of the red _vin de cave_ of Bouzy. This is illustrated by the fact that
the only samples of this exquisite wine sent to Paris for the Universal
Exposition of 1889 were those sent by Bouché Fils at Mareuil-sur-Ay, and
these represented only three vintages, the earliest being that of 1884.
The daintily aromatic bouquet of this wine is seldom unaffected even by
the short railway journey to the capital. Of course I know that by
speaking of this or of any other still wine of Champagne, I put myself
under the ban of Mr. Canning's famous declaration, so often cited by
Lord Beaconsfield, that 'the man who says he likes still champagne will
say anything.' Nevertheless what I have written, I have written--and I
shall not take it back. This the less, that I cannot allow myself even
to enter upon this theme of the vineyards of the chalky Marne and the
cellars of Champagne. Were I to do this, I should have a tale to unfold,
much too long, and involving too many points of controversy with the
accepted gastronomic authorities in my own country, in England, and in
Russia, to be brought within the compass of this volume. Suffice it that
the great wine-growers of Champagne do not seem to me to be infidels, or
to neglect the due provision of their own households in their
philanthropic anxiety to promote the convivial happiness of the four
quarters of the globe. The extent to which the syndication of vineyards
for the production of the wines most in demand in one or another part of
the world, has been developed of late years in Champagne is a noteworthy
phenomenon. Not less noteworthy is the growing attention paid throughout
this Department of the Marne of late years to scientific methods in
agriculture, and the steady improvement in the condition of the rural
population.
Whether a similar improvement can be shown in the general condition of
the urban population is not so clear as might be wished. That within
certain limits such an improvement has taken place, is however
undeniable; and this is of great interest, because it is distinctly due
to the energy and decision with which the challenge flung down to the
Christianity of this historic Christian heart of France has been taken
up by the Catholics of Reims.
In the course of a most interesting visit which I made in August to the
Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, His Eminence was good enough to put me in
the way of measuring for myself the work done among the factory people
of this region by a great Christian organization, the centre and pivot
of which was established here, but which is mow extending itself all
over the country. Most assuredly there is nothing in the story of this
work to indicate either the approaching death or the decay of the
religious sentiment in France.
This work rests, like all great works, upon certain principles. But
these principles were worked out, not through any theoretical
inquisition into the possibilities of society, but through a direct
personal practical experience of the relations between an employer of
labour and his employees. It is known now throughout France as the work
of the 'Christian Corporations,' and it includes, as a part of its
machinery, the 'Catholic Workmen's Clubs,' which are increasing and
multiplying throughout France. Its founder, M. Léon Harmel, is at the
head of an important manufactory at the Val-des-Bois near Reims. This
manufactory was established here half a century ago by the father of M.
Harmel, and the great social work which the son is now doing is the
coming to fruit, after many years, of the virtues and the experience of
his father. The Ardennes is the northernmost of the four Departments
into which the wise men of 1790 divided the ancient province of
Champagne, and M. Harmel, the father, had inherited a manufactory in
that department. This he gave up to his brother, and removing to the
Marne in 1840 he founded here the establishment of the Val-des-Bois. He
was a devout and sincere Catholic, and he had lived all his life among a
quiet and Catholic population in the Ardennes. He found himself
surrounded in his new home by a totally different people. His new
employees were amazed when they saw him attending mass at the parish
church on Sunday. A few of their wives and daughters went there
irregularly, but the men, as a rule, were 'total abstainers.'
M. Harmel made no attempt to preach to his people otherwise than by his
example. But the employer being regarded, in the light of modern
progress, as the natural enemy of the employee, this example had little
effect. M. Léon Harmel tells a delightful story of his father's first
success in inducing some of his workmen, with whom he had fallen
incidentally into conversation on the subject, to go over to Reims in
the early morning at the beginning of Lent, and confess to an excellent
priest there who was one of his friends. He spake with the men
separately, and said nothing to any one of them of his conversations
with the others. Meeting one of his converts on his return, M. Harmel
asked him about his experience. 'Ah, sir!' the man replied, 'it is all
very well, but I shall never be caught there again!' 'And, pray, why
not?' 'Why I thought I was the only man going to confess. I saw no one
when I went into the confessional, and the good priest was very good,
and I was glad I went. But when I came to commune in the church, there
were three of my comrades! How I looked at them, and how they looked at
me! It will be all over the factory to-night, and we four will have no
peace for six months! No! I shall not do this again!'
The manufactory prospered. If the example of M. Harmel availed little
against the public sentiment of the workpeople educated in utter
indifference to all religion, in the way of inducing them to attend to
their religious duties, his unvarying justice and benevolence, his
readiness to succour and to advise them in all straits, and his
unobtrusive devotion to his faith, at least exerted a wholesome effect
upon their general conduct; and the factory of the Val-des-Bois earned
a high reputation for its freedom from flagrant scandals and disorders.
But this did not satisfy M. Harmel. After twenty years of single-handed
and uphill work, he determined to seek help. On February 28, 1861, he
established three Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul in a small house which
had been a wayside inn, and set about Christianising his people in
earnest. There was no pomp or parade about the matter. The good Sisters
were quite content to establish an asylum for the little children in
what had been the stable of the inn, and to open their school in two
little upper chambers. Two Jesuit Fathers came and devoted a month to a
regular mission. Processions were organised and lectures given, some in
the factory, others at the little inn. The novelty of the enterprise
excited the attention of the people, and when a decided movement at last
of interest in the mission made itself clearly felt, M. Harmel took
advantage of it, with the help of the Sisters, to form Christian
associations, first among the young girls, then among the young men, and
then among the workmen themselves. The first young girl who gave an
effectual impulse to the work, was a girl selected by the Sisters, with
their usual sound instinct, because they found her capable of absolute
devotion to a not by any means estimable mother, and to a decidedly
reprehensible sister. She was a peasant-girl, brought up in a disorderly
family, by no means choice or refined in her language; but the Sisters,
for whom she conceived a great affection, saw that she was generous,
fearless, and determined, and that was enough.
With the girls, with the young men, with the workmen, no sort of direct
or indirect pressure was ever for a moment employed. The associations
which they formed were managed by themselves, M. Harmel, the priest whom
he finally brought to Val-des-Bois, and for whom he built a chapel, and
the missionary brethren, giving advice and aid only when and as it was
asked. One excellent workman, who had been in the factory for many
years, and who was much esteemed by M. Harmel, was asked one day by the
priest why he had never taken any interest in the religious
associations. 'I do take an interest in them,' he replied, 'and they are
doing a great deal of good. I don't feel moved to join them, but I do
them a great service often. Many a time in the cabarets I hear a man
say, "Oh, the papa Harmel is a good man, no doubt; they are right to
call him there 'the good father.' He is all that, but nobody can get any
work there unless he is a little saint!" Then I get up and say, "Don't
talk like a fool! You see me; I have worked for 'the good father'
thirty-five years. I have never done my religious duties, but nobody
treats me the worse for that! That shuts them up!"'
One great obstacle, at the outset, to the success of these associations,
out of which the 'Christian Corporations' were eventually to grow, was
the hostility of the elder married women to the 'Enfans de Marie,' and
the other societies of young girls. They objected that these societies
broke up the Sunday balls, and when they were asked whether these Sunday
balls did not lead to a good many scandals, they replied, 'Oh, young
people must amuse themselves; we used to amuse ourselves!' They insisted
too, that the girls would neglect their home duties to attend mass and
the meetings of their new societies. One particularly recalcitrant dame
made her husband's life a burden to him, because he not only encouraged
his daughters in going to the Sisters, but actually went to mass
himself. Finally, one day the poor man came to see the Sisters. He was
evidently much exercised in his mind, and showing the Sisters a small
sum of money he had, he said, 'I have saved this up to bring my old
woman to a better mind, and I want you to help me.' They asked him how.
'Why, you see, all the trouble comes because she don't know you, and
won't know you, and thinks everything wrong about you. Now if one of you
will just take this money, and buy her a new Sunday gown, and take it to
her as if it was a gift you wanted to make her, that will bring her all
right, I know, and we shall have peace in the house!'
What Sister could resist such an appeal? The pious fraud was
perpetrated, and the worthy dame gave way along the whole line!
This working population of Val-des-Bois, when M. Harmel began his work
among them, it will be seen, was a fair type of the average working
populations of France in those parts of France where the influence of
Radicalism has been most potent, and the influence of the Church
weakest. There is another factory in the same commune now. There are
sixteen others within a radius of three French leagues, and the city of
Reims, with its population of nearly a hundred thousand souls, is within
half an hour of the place. All the disturbing currents of socialism, of
agrarianism, of indifferentism play about and upon the place constantly.
The Sunday ball is an institution still. The influence of the local
authorities during the last ten years has been thrown against the
Catholic associations, and therefore, from the nature of the case, in
favour of dissipation, debauchery, and disorder.
To see his work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile
circumstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder
and more sceptical than M. Harmel.
In 1861, as I have said, not one workman could be found at Val-des-Bois
who dared to go to mass. In 1867, at the request of forty of his
workmen, M. Harmel assisted them in drawing up the statutes and
arranging the programme of a Catholic Working-Men's Club. The initiative
came from them. No pressure of any sort or kind was put upon them to
take it. It was the free outcome of the influence exerted upon them by
the example of the Harmel family and by the religious and charitable
work which the Sisters and the priests had been doing at Val-des-Bois.
Within a year the club doubled its membership. When the invasion came,
in 1870, it was an established institution.
'M. Harmel planted his Christians at Val-des-Bois,' said to me one of
the most interesting men I met at Reims, 'as our vine-growers in
Champagne plant their vines. It is one of the mysteries of our
viticulture that the grapes which yield our most delicate and exquisite
wines of Ay, all sparkle and sunshine, can only be made to yield those
wines when they are planted in our poorest and most chalky soil, and in
regions where the climate is so ungenial that the plants have to be set
as closely as possible together in the ground. We really huddle them
together, as we do sheep in the hurdles in winter, to keep one another
warm. This M. Harmel did with his converts. He taught his workmen to
associate more closely with one another, he brought their minds and
their hearts together, and let them act one upon another. He lived and
moved and had his own being among them like a father, and in this way
insensibly they came by degrees to regard each other as members of a
family. He has always felt, and his whole life has shown it, that the
"Declaration of the Rights of Man," whatever the motives of its authors
may have been, put the weak of this world at the mercy of the strong,
and set Capital free to deal with Labour as a mere matter of bargain
and sale. The dominant idea in his mind has always been, as it was in
the mind of his father before him--the "good father" of
Val-des-Bois--not how to get the most work out of his workmen, but how
best to do his own duty to his workmen, thinking that the best way to
get them, on their part, to do their duty to him. All this, you see, is
quite mediæval and Christian, not in the least modern and scientific!
But has the modern and scientific way of looking at the relations of
capital and labour, so far, been what may be called a great success? Do
we seem to be in the way of organizing a solid modern society on the
principles of the "struggle for life" and of the "survival of the
fittest"? Certainly these principles are a logical outcome of the
"Declaration of the Rights of Man," and of such legislation as that
which in 1791 shattered to pieces at a blow the whole ancient and
Christian organization of industry in our unhappy land of France! As
certainly too, they are admirably fitted to secure either the complete
subjugation of labour by capital or the relapse of France and of Europe
into barbarism. Is not universal suffrage a natural and easy weapon of
capital in any "struggle for life" with labour? Is it not clear that, in
losing the notion of duty to his employer, the workman has necessarily
lost the idea also of duty to his fellow-workmen? "Every man for
himself" is the motto of modern democracy, and do we not see that the
syndicates of workmen which it was the object of the Radicals to
establish by their law of March 1884 concerning "professional
syndicates," in order to facilitate and promote "strikes," are only kept
together and made to work by sheer terrorism? What is the sanction of
the measures ordered by such syndicates excepting the fear in which
every member goes of his fellow-members? Does not that take us a long
way on towards savage life? Does not that tend directly to build up a
subterranean machinery of despotism which will be at the service of the
shrewdest head and the longest purse whenever any real and decisive
issue arises between organised capital and organised labour?
'Look at the part which money played in our first unhappy revolution!
'It is the most instructive part of that whole sad history, and yet, for
a hundred different reasons, it is the part which from the beginning has
been most obscured by a miscellaneous conspiracy of silence. Some day
perhaps it will be possible to get a true life written of Le Pelletier
de Saint-Fargeau, the millionaire Mephistopheles of Philippe Égalité.
The hand that struck him to death in the very centre of the scene of his
long machinations, there in the Palais Royal, with his vote, dooming the
king to death, still as it were on his lips, did not strike at random.
There was no such bit of dramatic justice done in those dark days as the
killing of that man in that place between the giving of that vote and
the murder of the king that followed it next day!
'But the story cannot be written yet. They were much more concerned
about the death of Le Pelletier next day in the Convention, you will see
if you look into the true records of the session, than they were about
the murder of the king, which was then going on in the Place de la
Révolution. They gave him--why not?--(the most active of them and the
deepest in the plot were his property, bought and paid for)--they gave
him a national funeral, and made his heiress--the greatest heiress she
was in France--the ward of the nation.
'It was quite another vision he had in his mind for her! I will show you
some day a curious letter of hers written after she became a duchess,
about the Empress Joséphine. It is very instructive. She grew up a
lovely, untameable, unmanageable young person, made a love-match, as you
know, and with whom you know, broke her husband's heart, got a divorce
and married again. To go into all this now would disturb the peace of
families in no way responsible for her career or for the plots and
schemes of her father. It would be like "flushing" the ghost of that
monster Carrier who drowned the poor and the priests at Nantes, only to
plague his descendants. His son was an excellent person who very
properly changed his name. The most malicious thing I ever knew one
woman say of another, was said of one of his grand-daughters at a
foreign court by another Frenchwoman, jealous of her social success.
"She is very charming, no doubt; but look at her mouth, and you will see
she has carious teeth--_des dents Carrier_!" But when, if ever, the
truth about that dark episode of Le Pelletier and his schemes is told,
it will be seen how much more gold and private ambitions had to do with
the final fatal drift of things after the destiny of France fell into
the swirl of Paris, than all the howlings and ravings of the
philosophers and the patriots. What happened in the last century will
happen again whenever and wherever human society ceases to be held
together by the idea of Duty. It is not the discontent of Labour which
makes me most anxious as to the future. It is the egotism of Capital,
educated and encouraged into egotism by the false doctrines of what is
called Liberalism in this country, and provoked into egotism by the
equally egotistic discontent of Labour. What I most value in the work of
M. Harmel is the courage and precision with which he has from the first
insisted upon the Duty of the employer to the employed. You have seen,
of course, his _Catéchisme du Patron_?'
The Cardinal Archbishop had given me a copy of this book, which is
really one of the most remarkable contributions ever made to the
practical study of the relations between Capital and Labour. In it M.
Harmel has condensed, in the catechetical form of questions and answers,
his lifelong experience in the work of ascertaining and fulfilling all
the duties incumbent, from the point of view of Christian duty, upon the
capitalist who employs the labour of his fellow-men in putting his
capital into use and making it profitable. It would be very interesting
merely as a theory of the true relations between Labour and Capital. It
is more than interesting as the ripe expression of an experiment
faithfully and successfully carried out by a man of resolute will and
great practical ability for more than a quarter of a century in a field
which, when he entered upon it, was certainly one of the most
unpromising in the world.
The 'Christian Corporation' was an established institution, as I have
said, at Val-des-Bois, in 1870, when the war with Germany broke out. In
1871, after the storm of the invasion had been followed by the horrors
of the Commune of Paris, the principles on which the industrial family
at Val-des-Bois had been organised began to attract attention all over
France. A club of Catholic working-men was opened at Paris in 1871, and
a movement began in earnest for extending these institutions throughout
France. It made rapid progress. In September 1874 a great disaster
occurred at Val-des-Bois. The factory buildings took fire during the
night of the 12th of that month, and despite the efforts of the whole
population they were all in ashes when the morning broke. Before noon of
the next day M. Harmel announced to his workmen that he had leased, at
no small sacrifice of his immediate pecuniary interests, another factory
at some distance from the Val-des-Bois, called La Neuville, and that the
'Christian Corporation' of Val-des-Bois might at once be transferred
thither, and carried on as before until the reconstruction of its
original site. The tidings of this calamity brought substantial succour
from Catholic clubs all over France, from Marseilles to Nantes, and from
Bordeaux to Lille. More than a hundred clubs were represented in this
outburst of sympathy, and the disaster led, not indirectly, to a formal
approval of the work in a brief issued by His Holiness Pius IX. on
October 2, 1874.
In 1878 there were more than four hundred clubs in France, with a
membership of nearly a hundred thousand persons. Concurrently with the
development of these clubs a movement went on for establishing an
organisation of honorary members, not belonging to the working classes,
who should co-operate with the clubs in promoting the principles
represented by the 'Christian Corporations.' In 1875 a parliamentary
inquiry was made into the condition of Labour in France; and on behalf
of the committee which conducted this inquiry, the deputy, M. Ducarre,
who drew up the report, declared it to be the opinion of the committee
that all the syndicating movements of modern times point to the
necessity of re-establishing the corporate system of labour which was
destroyed by the First Republic in 1791. The language used in this
Report is worth citing.
'All the remedies suggested for the existing state of things,' said M.
Ducarre, 'may be summed up in this conclusion; there must be an end of
the isolation of the individual labourer. This must be replaced by the
action of collectivities, associations, or syndicates, whose duty it
shall be to watch over the interests of every calling. In a word we must
go back to the system of corporations of the trades, _maîtrises_, and
_jurandes_, under which labour was so long carried on in France.' This
Report found no favour in the eyes of the Radicals because it aimed at a
good understanding and practical co-operation between Labour and
Capital. Nine years afterwards, on March 21, 1884, a law was carried
through the French Parliament authorising the establishment of
'professional syndicates.' The object of the Republicans, then as now
controlling a majority of the Chamber, in passing this law, was to
strengthen the trades unions as against the employers of France. The
law, it will be observed, was passed at the time when a syndicate of
miners in the North, which had no legal right to exist before the
passage of the law, was actively promoting, under its leader, M. Basly,
the great strike at Anzin of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter.
But while the law of March 1884 legalised 'syndicates' of this
aggressive, and in the nature of things tyrannical, type, it also
necessarily legalised precisely such Christian corporations as those
contemplated in the Report of 1875, and long before organised on the
lines laid down by M. Harmel. A great and visible responsibility was
thus thrown upon the employers of France and upon what are called the
upper classes generally in that country. It was clear that, if they
would energetically and systematically throw themselves into the work of
bringing about a reconstruction of social order on the principles of
co-operation and sympathy as opposed to the principle of antagonism
between Capital and Labour, the law of 1884, intended to widen, might be
effectually used to close the threatening breach between the employers
and the employed. There seems to be little doubt that down to that time
the promoters of the Christian Corporation movement in France had made
greater headway with the working classes than with the employers. A
Report presented in 1885 by the general committee of the Catholic clubs
of France to the French bishops states this very plainly. This report
was signed by the Marquis De La-Tour-du-Pin-Chambly, who from the
beginning of M. Harmel's experiment at Val-des-Bois had been one of his
most earnest and active coadjutors, by the Comte de la Bouillerie,
Treasurer of the General Society, by the Comte de Mun, and by the Comte
Albert de Mun, the moving spirit now of the whole work, who resigned his
commission in the army to devote himself to it, and who went up from the
Morbihan to Paris as a deputy in 1885, elected by 60,341 votes, to
demand not only the restoration of the monarchy but a property
restriction upon the suffrage. In 1889, under the _scrutin
d'arrondissement_ readopted by the terrified Republicans to defeat
'Boulangism,' Count Albert de Mun was re-elected without opposition for
the 2nd division of Pontivy. In no part of France is the passion of
equality stronger than in the Morbihan; and the contempt of the people
there for 'universal suffrage' is extremely instructive.
'Of the Christian Corporations,' says this Report of 1885, 'as of the
working-men's clubs, it is proper to say that never in any place or at
any time has any obstacle been offered to them by the working classes.
On the contrary, there is plainly going on among the working classes,
under the influence of the deplorable crises which affect the industrial
world, an instinctive and ever-increasing movement towards this
association of common and professional interests, the notion of which is
suggested by the natural sentiment of right and wrong, as well as by
some confused memory, obscured by revolutionary doctrines, of the
traditions of Labour in France, which predisposes the working-man to
seek safety in a return to the old system of the Corporations. A
similar feeling exists among the employers, who desire, though they too
often despair of seeing, a closer union of interests between themselves
and their working-men. Wherever the movement languishes, one of the
chief causes will be found to be the apathy, the discouragement, and the
frivolity of the upper classes.'
In the case of great factories like that of the Val-des-Bois, the
Christian Corporations naturally are sufficient unto themselves. There
the employer and the employed between them constitute a small world,
which can take care of itself and carry out the numerous subsidiary
features of the system, such as the promotion of domestic economy, the
establishment of savings-funds, the organisation of festivals and of
courses of instruction, without relying much, or at all, upon any
co-operation from without. It is in the development of the system for
the benefit of working-men who are isolated in their work, or employed
in small establishments, that the co-operation of the upper classes is
needed; and while I incline to think that there is still much ground for
the strong language on this point employed in the Report of 1885, there
appears to be no doubt that a great improvement has taken place during
the last three or four years. In 1884 the efforts of the Cardinal
Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Angers, and of other energetic
prelates, secured the active participation of the Holy See in the
promotion of this work. In February of that year a pilgrimage to Rome of
members of the Catholic Clubs of France was organised. The pilgrims were
received in special audience by Leo XIII., and he gave his Papal
approbation and benediction to the work in a very remarkable address
which produced a deep and widespread impression throughout Catholic
France. Similar pilgrimages were made in 1887 and in 1889.
One very important effect of this has been to bring about a better
understanding between the parochial clergy of France in general and
these steadily increasing lay organisations. It is in the nature of
things that the clergy should be slow in giving their unreserved aid to
any movement, no matter how admirable in itself, which involves a good
deal of extra-clerical activity in matters religious. This was
illustrated in the attitude of the English Protestant clergy towards
Wesley and Whitfield, and there are some curious coincidences--of course
absolutely undesigned--between some of the methods of the great and
powerful Protestant sect of the Wesleyans and those of M. Harmel's
Catholic Clubs.
The Methodist 'class-leader,' for example, reappears in a modified form
in the _zélateurs_ and _zélatrices_ of the Harmel Clubs and
fraternities. These are members, working-men and working-women, who are
willing to devote themselves to promoting religious sentiments and
practices among their comrades, and who hold regular meetings to
consider and work out the best and most practical way of doing this.
It is not surprising that in many cases the curés should have looked
with a little uneasiness upon the development of such a system until it
had been fully considered and formally approved by the highest authority
in the Church. Of its efficacy from the point of view of M. Harmel there
can be no doubt.
Something not wholly unlike the 'exclusive dealing' which contributes so
much to the strength of Methodism in America has also been established
for the benefit of the members of M. Harmel's Christian Corporation.
This is 'exclusive dealing 'of an honest and honourable sort, and must
not be confounded with the rascally 'exclusive dealing' known in Ireland
as 'boycotting.' It combines a system of 'privileged purveyors' with an
accumulative savings fund.
The firm of Harmel Brothers, acting for the Corporation, makes contracts
with tradesmen at Val-des-Bois--grocers, butchers, bakers, and the
like--by which the tradesmen bind themselves to sell certain wares to
members of the Christian Corporations, and to them only, at a fixed
discount below the lowest current rate of prices--the wares to be of the
best quality, under a penalty--and the lowest current rate to be fixed
by an average taken from the current rates as given to Harmel Brothers
by four dealers in such wares in the city of Reims, of whom two are to
be named by them and two by the 'privileged purveyor.' Each member of
the Corporation receives certificates, of one franc, ten sous, or ten
centimes in value, from the office of Harmel Brothers, and these are
taken by the 'privileged purveyor' in payment at their face value.
For him they are each week cashed in money at the office of Harmel
Brothers. If the members prefer to pay the 'privileged purveyor' in
cash, or in orders upon their wages, the sums so paid are inscribed on
the account of the Corporation. When the weekly or fortnightly accounts
are made up, a certain percentage of the differences between the current
market-price of the purchases made and the actual price so paid by the
purchasers goes to what is called the 'Corporation profit,' the residue
of the difference being paid over to the member with his or her wages.
The 'Corporation profit' is a savings fund. Each member has a book
showing--with his or her number, and with the full name of the head of
the family to which he or she may belong--the amount of this fund
standing each quarter to his or her credit, with interest at 5 per cent.
This can only be drawn out by the member, on leaving the employment of
the firm, in case of illness or incapacity, or at the age of fifty
years.
An actuary's estimate shows that the share of the Corporation profit
accruing to each member in twenty-five years on an annual estimated
average Corporation profit of 70 francs a member, with five per cent.
interest, would be 3,300 francs. And this, be it observed, will have
cost the member nothing, being simply a result of the union of employer
and employed in a corporate dealing with the purveyors. In 1879 the
annual budget of a hundred families at Val-des-Bois, earning among them
249,242 francs, showed an actual 'Corporation profit' of 91,319.05
francs, which ought to have been much larger had Val-des-Bois then
possessed more than one butcher, baker, grocer, and tailor. These
hundred families comprised 496 members, 279 of them employed in the
factory and 217 occupied at home.
During the last ten years, and especially since the passage of the law
of March 1884, the scope of these Christian Corporations, not only at
Val-des-Bois and at Reims, but all over France, has been considerably
extended. Many of them have now the character of true guilds, as at
Poitiers, for example, where there is a Corporation of the Builders
under the invocation of St-Radegonda, another--Our Lady of the
Keys--founded upon a syndicate of clothiers, and a third, of St.-Honoré,
founded upon a syndicate of provision-dealers. At Lille I found a
typical Corporation, that of the spinners and weavers, known as the
Christian Corporation of St.-Nicholas. This was founded in May 1885.
This Corporation admits workmen and workwomen, employees and
manufacturers, belonging, either by residence or by connexion with the
industry named, to the commune of Lille or to one of the adjoining
communes. It had last year a membership of 887 persons, of whom 26 were
master manufacturers and 37 employees, the rest being workmen and
workwomen. Five large firms were represented in it. The Syndical Council
was made up of a syndic employer, a syndic employee, and a syndic
workman from each of these firms, and of a syndic workman, M.
Courtecuisse, representing the members who were employed in other
establishments. The directing bureau consisted of seven members,
including the chaplain. It was presided over by one of the great
manufacturers of Lille, M. Féron-Vrau, and the two vice-presidents were
M. Edouard Bontry, of the house of Bontry-Droullers, and M. Courtecuisse
already named.
This Corporation, under the law of 1884, can own the buildings necessary
for its meetings, its libraries, and its lecture-courses; it can
establish among its members special savings funds, mutual assistance and
pension funds; found and conduct offices for information bearing on the
business of its members, and it may be consulted, under Article 6 of the
Law of 1884, on 'all difficulties and misunderstandings and questions
arising out of its specialty.' This provision--specially intended by the
authors of the law to arm the 'strikers' of France against French
employers--may thus, it will be seen, be turned quite as effectually to
purposes of concord and harmony as to purposes of discontent and strife.
The Corporation of St.-Nicholas may receive gifts and legacies in aid of
its Corporation funds and purposes, and generally take an active part,
like all these Corporations, as was pointed out by Leo XIII. in his
'Encyclical of April 20, 1884,' in protecting, under the 'guidance of
the Faith, both the interests and the morals of the people.'
It already has within its sphere of action a Confraternity of Our Lady
of the Factory, comprising 548 members, a Mutual Aid Society with 218
members, an Assistance Fund with 409 members; and a Domestic Economy
Fund, the principle of which is that certain dealers make a discount on
their wares to members of the Corporation which is certified to by them
in counters of different values. These counters are receivable by the
Corporation in payment of the assessments and subscriptions of the
members.
The steady development of these institutions during the last four or
five years has led to the organisation by them of a complete general
system of administration, provincial and national. The Corporations are
grouped not by departments but by provinces.
Provincial assemblies are held, by which delegates are named to attend
an annual general assembly at Paris. At the general assembly of 1889,
held on June 24, 350 delegates were present, and the session of the
assembly was opened by the delegation from Dauphiny, the chair being
taken by one of its members, M. Roche, in virtue, as he explained to the
crowded audience in the large hall of the Horticultural Society in the
Rue de Grenelle, of his descent 'from a representative of the Estates of
Dauphiny in 1789.' The work of the assembly was divided between four
committees, one on moral and religious interests, one on public
interests, one on commercial and industrial interests, and one on
agricultural and rural interests.
From this it will be seen that the principles of the movement are being
systematically applied to the whole field of active life in France. The
general maxim of the organisation is the sound, sensible, and military
maxim, of St.-Vincent de Paul, 'let us keep our rules, and our rules
will keep us,' and I think there can be no doubt that the French
freemasons, and the fanatics of unbelief generally who have launched the
government of the Third Republic upon its present course, will find this
new Christian organisation of Capital and Labour a troublesome factor in
the political field.
We have seen what came in Germany of the _Cultur-Kampf_, and there are
curious analogies between the work and the spirit of the Catholic Clubs
in France to-day, and the ideas of Monseigneur von Ketteler, which gave
vigour and vitality to the great 'party of the Centre,' in the contest
with the Chancellor. Where the giant of Berlin had the wisdom to give
way, the pigmies of Paris are likely to persist until they are crushed.
For they have burned their ships, as the Chancellor never burned his,
and they are dogmatists, while he is a statesman. He sought to control
and use the Catholic Church in Germany. Their object is, as one of the
ablest Republicans in France, Jules Simon, long ago told them, to
supplant a State Church of belief by a State church of unbelief. In
America and in England when men talk of 'religious freedom,' they mean
the freedom of a man to profess and practise his own religion. What the
Third French Republic means by 'religious freedom' is freedom from
religion. Their legislation has tended, ever since 1877, not indirectly
nor by implication, but directly and avowedly, to establish in France a
state of things in which, not Catholics only, but all men who profess
any form of religion, shall be treated as Protestants were in France
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or as Catholics were in
Ireland under William III. This is the meaning of M. Gambetta's war-cry
'Clericalism is the enemy.' The phrase was his, but the policy was
announced by his party long before he invented the phrase in 1877. It
was distinctly formulated in 1874 by a Republican leader much better
equipped for dealing with such questions than M. Gambetta, who was the
Boanerges not the Paul of the French gospel of unbelief.
On September 4, 1874, M. Challemel-Lacour, in a remarkable speech, laid
it down as a fundamental principle of the Republican policy that the
State should so control all the higher branches of education as to
secure what he called 'the moral unity of France.' It was on this
principle that Napoleon in 1808 had re-organised the University of
France. M. Challemel-Lacour unhesitatingly called upon the Republicans
to adopt it. If Catholics or Protestants or Israelites were allowed to
found universities of their own and confer degrees and diplomas, what
would become of the 'moral unity of France'? The duty of the Republicans
was to protect and develop this 'moral unity.' So long as one Frenchman
could be found in France who believed anything not believed by every
other Frenchman, so long this 'moral unity' would be imperfect. The
French Liberals of 1830 obviously made a great mistake when they put
'freedom of education' as a right of Frenchmen in the charter. M.
Guizot, the great Protestant Minister of Louis Philippe, obviously made
a great mistake when he established the principles of free primary
education in 1833. The Republicans of 1848 obviously made a great
mistake when they proclaimed 'freedom of education' as a Republican
principle. The Jacobins of 1792 were the true 'children of light,' and
they alone understood how really to achieve the 'moral unity of France,'
M. Challemel-Lacour did not say this in so many words; but he did say in
so many words that he objected to see any bill passed which should
establish 'freedom of education,' and permit clerical persons to found
universities, because, 'instead of establishing the moral unity of
France, this newfangled liberty would only aggravate the division of
Frenchmen into two sets of minds moving upon different lines to
different conclusions. The young men educated in these universities,' he
said, 'will become zealous apostles of Catholicism. The more ardour they
put into their proselytism the more antagonism they will excite!' At
this passage in M. Challemel-Lacour's extraordinary speech, according to
the official report, a member of the Right broke in with the very
natural exclamation, 'And why not? Is not that liberty? liberty for
all?' To which M. Challemel-Lacour discreetly made no reply, but went on
to say, 'Instead of establishing our moral unity, you will heap up
combustibles in the country until shocks are produced and perhaps
cataclysms!'
This is the doctrine of the worthy Lord Mayor in 'Barnaby Rudge' who
querulously exclaims to Mr. Harwood when that gentleman came to him
asking for protection against the Gordon rioters, 'What are you a
Catholic for? If you were not a Catholic the rioters would let you
alone. I do believe people turn Catholics a-purpose to vex and worrit
me!' 'Moral unity' would have saved the good Lord Mayor a great deal of
trouble. 'Moral unity' would have kept things quiet and comfortable
throughout the Roman Empire under Diocletian, and throughout the Low
Countries under Phillip II. and Alva, and throughout England under Henry
VIII. The Jacobins of 1792 did their best to organise 'moral unity' in
France with the help of the guillotine, and of the Committee of Public
Safety and of the hired assassins who butchered prisoners in cold blood.
Here, at Reims, in September 1792, while Marat 'the Friend of the
People' and Danton the 'Minister of Justice' were employing Maillard the
'hero of the Bastile' and his salaried cut-throats to promote public
economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain
agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of
France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French
Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes
to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost
comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about
eight persons were killed--and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.'
The contest of this curious passage plainly shows that he imagined these
'eight persons' (more or less) to have been "killed" by the people of
Reims, roused into a patriotic frenzy by the circular which Marat, Panis
and Sergent sent out to the provinces calling upon all Frenchmen to
imitate the 'people of Paris,' and massacre all the enemies of the
Revolution at home before marching against the foreign invaders. That
the 'people' of Reims thus aroused should only have killed 'about eight
persons' really seemed to him, one would say, hardly worthy of a truly
'Titanic' and 'transcendental' epoch. There is something essentially
bucolic in the impression which mobs and multitudes always seem to make
upon Mr. Carlyle's imagination. Of what really happened at Reims in
September 1792 he plainly had no accurate notion. He obviously cites
from some second-hand contemporary accounts of the transactions there
this statement, that 'about eight persons were killed,' because, as it
happens, we have a full precise and official Report of the killing of
all these persons, with their names and details of the massacre, drawn
up on September 8, 1792, by the municipal authorities of Reims and
signed by all the members of the Council General. Had Mr. Carlyle seen
this Report, it would have shown him that Marat, Panis and Sergent knew
what they were about when they sent out their famous or infamous
circular, just as Marat and Danton knew what they were about when they
organised the massacres of September in the prisons of Paris. The
'people' of Reims had no more to do with the killing of 'about eight
persons' in the streets and squares of this historic city in September
1792 than the 'people' of Paris had to do with the atrocious butcheries
at the Abbeys and Bicêtre and La Force and the Conciergerie. Mr. Carlyle
ought to have learned even from the 'Histoire Parlementaire' of Buchez
and Roux, which he seems to have freely consulted, that 'the days of
September were an administrative business.'
What actually happened at Reims in September 1792 is worth telling. It
does not prove, as Mr. Carlyle almost dolefully takes it to prove, that
in the provinces the 'Sansculottes only bellowed and howled but did not
bite.' It does prove that when they bit, they bit to order, and under
impulses no more 'Titanic' or 'transcendental' than those which in our
own time lead active politicians to invent lies about the character of
their opponents, and to manufacture emotional issues on the eve of a
sharp political contest.
The subsidised Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, prostrated the
monarchy, but it did not found the Republic. It was the death knell both
of Pétion and of the Girondists, who had been most active in secretly or
openly promoting it. The Constitution having been torn into shreds,
power became a prize to be fought for by all the demagogues and all the
factions in Paris. The Legislative Assembly fell into the trough of the
sea. The sections of Paris supported Marat in calmly laying hands on the
printing-presses and material of the royal printing-office, and
converting his abominable newspaper into a 'Journal of the Republic.' He
was voted a special 'tribune of honour' in the hall of the Council. On
August 19 he openly called upon the 'people' to 'march in arms to the
prison of the Abbaye, take out the prisoners there, especially the
officers of the Swiss Guard and their accomplices, and put them to the
sword.' This was an electoral proceeding. The members of the National
Convention were then about to be chosen. Under a law passed by the
expiring legislature, electors of the members were first to be chosen by
the voters on August 26, and the electors thus chosen were to meet on
September 2, and choose the members of the Convention. It was in view of
this second and decisive election day that Marat and Danton settled the
date at which the great patriotic work of 'emptying the prisons' should
begin, and it was in view of this day also that the circular already
mentioned of Marat, Panis and Sergent was sent forth to all places at
which a lively administration of murder and pillage would be most likely
to conduce to the choice by the electors of deputies agreeable to the
authors of the circular.
The electors for the Department of the Marne chosen on August 26 were to
meet in Reims on September 2, and choose the Deputies for that
department to sit in the Convention.
In Reims Marat had a faithful personal ally in the person of the
Procureur-Syndic, the most important national functionary in the city.
This man, Couplet, called Beaucourt, was a disreputable and apostate
ex-monk who had married an ex-nun. His position, of course, gave him a
great influence over the least respectable part of the population, and
with Marat and Danton at his back in Paris he cared nothing for the
mayor and the municipal authorities. From August 19 to August 31 he kept
issuing incendiary placards and making inflammatory speeches in Reims.
On August 31 he received an intimation from Paris that a column of
so-called 'Volunteers' was in motion for Reims, and that he must have
things ready for them. To this end he caused the arrest of the
postmaster, M. Guérin, and of a poor young letter-carrier named Carton,
on a charge of sequestrating and burning 'compromising letters' which
ought to have been turned over to him and the 'justice of the Republic.'
On the morning of the election day there marched into Reims the expected
'Volunteers,' who carried banners proclaiming them to be 'Men of the
10th of August.' Couplet received them and feasted them. They broke up
into squads and went roaring about Reims denouncing 'the aristocrats'
and demanding 'justice upon all public enemies.' They finally broke open
the prison, and dragging out the unfortunate postmaster, cut him to
pieces in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Some courageous citizens
contrived to smuggle out of their reach the young letter-carrier, and
took him for safety into the hall of the Municipal Council.
There the murderers followed him, excited by a speech from the
Procureur-Syndic, who knowing that no trial had been had, did not
scruple to say that 'nothing could excuse the unfaithful
letter-carrier.'
The town officers tried to get Carton out by a back door, but Marat's
murderers were too quick for them, and the poor youth was torn to
pieces. While this was doing the Procureur-Syndic provided another
victim. He arrested on some pretext a retired officer of the army, M. de
Montrosier, ex-commandant of Lille, then in the house of his
father-in-law, M. Andrieux, one of the first magistrates of Reims. M. de
Montrosier being taken to prison, the Maratist mob broke again into the
prison, dragged him out, killed him, and carried his head all over Reims
on a pike. Meanwhile a detachment went out to a neighbouring village in
quest of two of the canons of Reims, who had taken refuge there, brought
them back to the city, and shot them dead in the street. Night now
coming on, the apostles of the 'moral unity of France,' many of them by
this time being exceedingly drunk, kindled a huge bonfire in front of
the Hôtel de Ville, flung into it the mutilated corpses of their
victims, and towards midnight laying hands upon two priests, MM. Romain
and Alexandre, threw them into the flames! Another band during the
evening broke into the venerable church of St.-Rémi, and tearing down
the shields and banners which for fourteen centuries had hung above the
tomb of the great Archbishop who made France a Christian kingdom,
brought these to the bonfire and consumed them.
During this day of horrors, the electors of the department had been in
session. As the news reached them of what was going on in the streets,
one thought came into the minds of all the decent men among them, to get
through as fast as possible and quit the city. At the first ballot 442
electors were present. At the seventh only 203 remained. Of these 135,
being the compact 'Republican' minority, gave their votes on that ballot
to Drouet, the postmaster's son of Ste-Ménéhould, Mr. Carlyle's 'bold
old dragoon,' who stopped the carriage of Louis XVI. at Varennes. He was
one of the special adherents of Marat, and a most vicious and venal
creature, as his own memoirs, giving among other matters an account of
his grotesque attempt to fly down out of his Austrian prison with a pair
of paper wings, abundantly attest. He escaped the guillotine, and
naturally enough turned up under the empire as an obsequious sub-prefect
at Ste-Ménéhould. The whole of the elections, which in normal
circumstances would have occupied at least three days, were hurried
through before midnight of the first day.
Couplet, called Beaucourt, was satisfied. But so were not the 'men of
the 10th of August,' They got their pay of course, but they wanted more
blood. At 9 A.M. the next morning they seized the venerable curé of
St.-Jean, the Abbé Paquot, and dragged him before Couplet, insisting
that he should take the constitutional oath. Couplet tried to explain
that the time for taking it had expired on August 26. But the courageous
Abbé, looking his assassins in the face, said to them: 'I will not take
it, it is against my conscience. If I had two souls I would gladly give
one of them for you. I have but one, and it belongs to my God.' He had
hardly uttered the words when he was struck down and cut to pieces.
Almost at the same moment another priest more than eighty years of age,
the curate of Rilly, refusing to take the oath, was hanged upon the bar
of a street lantern before the eyes of the Mayor of Reims, who tried in
vain to disperse or control these _sans-culottes_, who, according to Mr.
Carlyle, 'howled and bellowed, but did not bite.'
By this time the news came of the surrender of Verdun to the Prussians,
and the tocsin began to sound from the great bells of the cathedral. The
citizens of Reims suddenly took courage from the sense of the national
peril, not to fall upon and slay helpless and unarmed prisoners, but to
make head against the murderers and scoundrels who were domineering over
their city. The local National Guards began to appear, and were shortly
reinforced by a column of Volunteers from the country armed to meet the
invaders. The Mayor took command of them and marched to the Hôtel de
Ville. There they found that one Chateau, an agent of Couplet, had been
secretly denounced by his employer as a spy and promptly hanged by the
Parisians on the same lantern-bar from which the night before they had
hanged the aged curé of Rilly. His dead body had been flung into the
still blazing bonfire kept up all night with woodwork from the pillaged
churches of Reims. The champions of 'moral unity' had also laid hands on
the wife of this wretched man, and were on the point of throwing her
alive into the flames when the Mayor and the troops appeared. The order
to 'charge bayonets' was given and the whole brood of scoundrels
thereupon broke and fled in all directions.
All these details, with others too loathsome to be here reproduced, are,
as I have said, taken from an official _procès verbal_ drawn up at Reims
on September 8, 1792, and signed by every member of the Council-General.
This record was produced when in 1795, after the fall of Robespierre had
opened the way for the great reaction which finally made Napoleon master
of France, the tribunals of the Department of the Marne took steps to
bring to justice such of the assassins of 1792 as they could lay hands
upon. On the 26 Thermidor, An III., two wretches, one a newspaper-vendor
and the other a slopshop-keeper, were condemned to death and executed
for the murder of the Abbé Paquot and of the curé of Rilly. Two others,
a glazier and a shoemaker, were condemned to six years in the
chain-gang.
The evidence on which these assassins were convicted in 1795 had then
been for two years in the hands of the municipal authorities at Reims.
But during these two years France had been the football of the employers
and accomplices of these assassins. The municipal authorities had been
powerless to prevent these murders, which were committed in the public
streets and under the protection of the Procureur-Syndic of the
department, the official representative at Reims of the 'Minister of
Justice,' Danton, at Paris. They were equally powerless to punish them.
The Mayor of Reims was fortunate to escape denunciation at Paris for
his attempt to save the lives of some of the victims. That was an
offence against the 'moral unity' which the First Republic tried to
establish.
There was a heroic Mayor in those days at Lille named André. When the
Duke of Saxe-Teschen with his wife, a sister of Marie Antoinette,
appeared before Lille at the head of an Austrian army and demanded the
surrender of the place, Mayor André, who was a Republican but not of the
'moral unity' type, replied that he had sworn to keep the place, and he
would keep his oath. With the help of the Ancient Artillery Corporations
of the old Flemish city (Corporations of which the 'Honourable Artillery
Corps' of London and of Boston are offshoots), Mayor André did keep his
oath and kept Lille. The Minister Roland, the respectable confederate of
the virtuous Pétion, sent him promises of help, but no help. Why?
Because Mayor André had taken the lead in a masculine protest of the
honest people of Lille against that ruffianly invasion of the Tuileries
by the mob on June 20 which the virtuous Pétion, Mayor of Paris, and his
respectable confederate Roland had for their own purposes promoted. So
Mayor André got words and no troops. But Lille took care of herself;
bore a tremendous bombardment for days without flinching, and finally,
in the early days of October, saw the Saxon Duke and his army march
away, Valmy having opened the eyes of Brunswick to the utter futility
and fanfaronnade of the French emigrant noblesse and princes, who had
drawn up for him and persuaded him against his own better judgment to
sign the too famous and fatal proclamation with which he heralded the
Austro-Prussian advance into France. Mayor André having thus saved the
grand North-eastern bulwark of France, his services had to be in some
way recognised. But in what way? Paris voted that Lille had deserved
well of the nation, which was obvious enough; also that Lille should get
a million of francs towards repairing damages, which million of francs,
I am assured, never reached Lille; also that a grand monument should
commemorate the valour and constancy of Lille. But the grand monument
was never erected until half a century afterwards, when King Louis
Philippe took the matter up, and carried it through.
With the proclamation of the Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be
meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and
property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals.
Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the
camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present
President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its
floor, gave the keynote of the new order of things. 'We must draw a
veil,' he exclaimed, 'over the Declaration of the Rights of Man!' And a
veil was indeed drawn over the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Here at
Reims, as elsewhere, proscriptions and confiscations were the order of
the day. The glorious Cathedral of Reims itself, the Westminster and
Canterbury in one of France, was in continual peril. Nothing really
saved it and the Archi-episcopal palace but the religious and patriotic
reverence of the people of Reims for the memory of Jeanne d Arc. In that
Archi-episcopal palace the peasant girl of Domrémy, the Virgin saviour
of France, had been lodged. In that Cathedral she had stood, her banner
in her hand, and watched the solemn consecration of her mission and her
triumph. The emissaries of plunder and murder from Paris shrank from
driving the Rémois to extremities on that issue. But they desecrated the
building and defaced it as much as they dared.