generally worked at the saw-mill. During the time I was there, I
observed that Dr. Whitman was in the habit of poisoning wolves. I
did not see him put the poison in the baits for the wolves; but
two of his young men of the house, by his order, were poisoning
pieces of meat, and distributing them in the places where the
wolves were in the habit of coming, at a short distance around
the establishment of the doctor. The doctor once gave me some
arsenic to poison the wolves that were around the saw-mill....
Some Indians who happened to pass there took the meat and ate it;
three of them were very sick, and were near dying.... Mr. Gray,
who was then [1840] living with the doctor, offered us as many
melons to eat as we liked, but he warned us at the same time not
to eat them indiscriminately, as some of them were poisoned. ‘The
Indians,’ said he, ‘are continually stealing our melons. To stop
them, we have put a little poison on the bigger ones, _in order
that the Indians who will eat them might be a little sick_.’”
(_Statement of John Young, corroborated by Augustine Raymond._)
In addition to these acts of imprudence, the doctor, it seems, had
earned for himself an unenviable unpopularity. He was constantly
extorting overpay in horses from them, and threatening them with
soldiers and emigrants if they refused it. After having a quarrel with
them on one occasion, “during which they insulted him, covered him
with mud,” and even attempted his life, “he started for the United
States, telling the Indians that he was going to see the great chief
of the Americans, and that when he would return he would bring with
him many people to chastise them; the Indians had been looking to his
return with great fear and anxiety.”[143] At another time, in the fall
of 1847, he said to the Indians at Walla Walla in the presence of
several white men, “Since you are so wicked, such robbers, we shall
send for troops to chastise you, and next fall we will see here five
hundred dragoons, who will take care of you.” But even Doctor Whitman,
“fickle and obstinate” as he was, could not entirely overlook the
dangers that beset him for so many years, and at the solicitation of
his friend had been preparing to leave his station long before the
arrival of the Catholic missionaries. Mr. Thomas McKay, whom the
doctor had invited to stop the winter of 1847-8 with him for
protection, says, “He told me repeatedly, during the last two years
especially, that he wished to leave, as he knew the Indians were
ill-disposed toward him, and that it was dangerous for him to stay
there; but that he wished all the chiefs to tell him to go away, in
order to _excuse himself to the Board of Foreign Missions_.” Dangerous
and fatal mistake, which cost the lives of thirteen innocent people,
and closed the unfortunate man’s earthly career!
Now for the affair of the young woman Miss Bewley, who is described in
_Pub. Doc. No. 37_, p. 35, indifferently as an “amiable young saint,”
a “dear girl,” and “an angel.” It is charged that, when Five Crows
demanded her for his wife, and she refusing to go with him, the
bishops and priests urged her to go, and even thrust her out-of-doors
when she refused. So little credence was given this specific calumny,
for many years after the alleged occurrence, that the only mention we
find made of it in _The Murder of Dr. Whitman_ is the following
paragraph:
“Before taking leave of the chiefs, the bishop said to them all
publicly, as he had also done several times privately, that those
who had taken American girls should give them up immediately. And
then all entreated Five Crows to give up the one he had taken,
but to no purpose.”
Now let us hear Father Brouillet’s account of the affair in 681
contradiction to Miss Bewley’s deposition:
“We did,” says the reverend gentleman, “all that charity could
claim, and even more than prudence seemed to permit. We kept her
for seventeen days in our house, provided for all her wants, and
treated her well, and if she had minded us, and heeded our advice
and entreaties, she would never have been subjected to that
Indian. When she came first to our house, and told us that Five
Crows had sent for her to be his wife, we asked her what she
wanted to do. Did she want to go with him, or not? She said she
did not want to go with him. ‘Stay with us, then, if you like; we
will do for you what we can,’ was our offer. When the evening
came, the Indian chief called for her. The writer then requested
his interpreter to tell him that she did not want to be his wife,
and that, therefore, he did not want her to go with him. The
interpreter, who was an Indian, allied by marriage to the
Cayuses, and knew the chiefs disposition well, would not provoke
his anger, and refused to interpret. The writer, then making use
of a few Indian words he had picked up during the few days he had
been there, and with the aid of signs, spoke to the Indian
himself, and succeeded in making him understand what he meant.
The Indian rose furiously and without uttering a word went away.
The young woman then got frightened, and wanted to go for fear he
might come back and do us all an injury. The writer tried to
quiet her, and insisted that she should remain at our house, but
to no avail; she must go, and off she went. The Indian, still in
his fit of anger, refused to receive her, and sent her back. She
remained with us three or four days undisturbed; until one
evening, without any violence on the part of the Indian, or
without advising with us, she went with him to his lodge. She
came back the next morning, went off again in the evening, and
continued so, without being forced by the Indian, and part of the
time going by herself, until at last she was told to select
between the Indian’s lodge and our house, as such a loose way of
acting could not be suffered any longer. That was the first and
only time that she offered any resistance to the will of the
Indian; but, indeed, her resistance was very slight, if we can
believe her own statement.”
This is a very different account from that sworn to by Miss Bewley,
but written by Spaulding, as he says himself, _Ex. Doc. No. 37_, p. 27:
“I would go to an individual, and take down in writing what he or she
knew, and then go before a magistrate, and the individual would make
an oath to the statement, the officer certifying.” There is no mention
that the parties were permitted to read what their amanuensis took
down, and all who are acquainted with such _ex-parte_ depositions know
how easily it would be to alter their sense and meaning by an
unscrupulous person--which we are about to show Spaulding to be. In
this very statement there are two interpolations, one of eight lines
on page 35 of _Ex. Doc. No. 37_, beginning with the words “I arose,”
and one of six on the following page, at “The next day,” which
materially alter the whole meaning of the document. This alteration of
a sworn statement by any but the affiant is at common law _forgery_,
and ought to entitle the person who makes it to the delicate attention
of the prosecuting attorney of his county. Whether the saint and
angel, Miss Bewley, is now aware of the forgery connected with her
name we know not, but we trust that the Senate will make a note of it
for the benefit of future historians. But Spaulding, who is described
by his co-missionary Gray as “quite impulsive and bitter in his
denunciations of a real or supposed enemy,” in endeavoring to make out
a case, is not content with altering one affidavit. That of Mr.
Osborne (_Ex. Doc. No. 37_, p. 32) is also materially changed in
several places from the original, and the official reports of Mr.
McLane (_Ex. Doc._ p. 33) and of Dr. White are doctored in a manner 682
that we venture to say would render it difficult for the writers
themselves to recognize them. Even the plain statements of _The Murder
of Dr. Whitman_ are garbled in a most palpable and scandalous manner.
As to the other auxiliary charges against the Catholic missionaries,
and the answers of Abernethy and a few others to questions propounded
by Spaulding, we do not consider them worthy of serious attention.
They are all directly or indirectly the creatures of Spaulding’s
fertile imagination, who, if not crazy as Colonel Gilliam said, has
allowed his hatred of Catholicity to carry him down to fearful depths
of crime, to calumny, falsehood, and forgery. His motives are
apparent, the gratification of his lust for revenge, and his hatred of
our faith; that of the associations who have signed his outrageous
statements is the present flourishing existence of the Catholic
missions in every part of Oregon; and the end proposed is to compass
their destruction by appealing to the religious prejudices of the
authorities at Washington. We have too much confidence in the wisdom
and good sense of the Executive and Congress to suppose that they will
be influenced by such inflammatory appeals--bearing on their face the
palpable impress of dishonesty and prejudice--and attempts to disturb
the good fathers in their labor of love, as well as of hardships and
suffering; and we expect soon to hear of those fanatics receiving a
fitting rebuke in our Senate for attempting to make that august body
the vehicle of perpetuating the vilest sort of falsehoods and slanders
against the Catholics of this country.
[130] _Ex. Doc. No._ 37, U. S. Senate, XLIst Cong., IIId
Session. 1870-1.
[131] Victor’s _The River of the West_, p. 400.
[132] _Works of Stephen Olin_, vol. ii. pp. 427, 428.
[133] Gray’s _Hist. of Oregon_, pp. 231, 246.
[134] _History of Oregon._ By G. Hines.
[135] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, pp. 23, 24.
[136] Gray’s _History of Oregon_, p. 235.
[137] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, p. 89.
[138] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, p. 46.
[139] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, pp. 53-55.
[140] The five Cayuses who were hung in Oregon City, June 3,
1850, as accomplices in the massacre, were all Protestants,
and remained so till they received their death sentence. All
the others who are known as murderers, among whom were
Lumsuky, Tamahas, and the two sons of Tilokaikt, were also
Protestants. Joseph Stainfield, Jo Davis, and the other
half-breed, who, it is said, plundered the dead, if
anything, were certainly not Catholics. Three of the
condemned on the morning of the execution solemnly declared
that the Catholic missionaries had nothing whatever to do
with the murder. The following letter to the Bishop of Walla
Walla, from the Archbishop of Oregon City, will be found
interesting:
OREGON CITY, June 2, 1850.
The supposed Cayuse murderers will be executed to-morrow.
They have abandoned Dr. Whitman’s religion and have become
Catholics. I am preparing them for baptism and for death.
F. N. BLANCHET,
Archbishop of Oregon City.
[141] _Oregon American._
[142] Letter of R. T. Lockwood to Very Rev. J. B. A.
Brouillet, V.G., Sept. 29, 1871.
[143] Toupin’s statement.
----------
AFFIRMATIONS.
“Why does man go about organizing systems, when he himself must be
reorganized?”
“The thing to be done will not unite the doers.”
“When man forgets what he is, he soon is put into a state of uneasiness,
and made to suffer in pain what was designed for him to be pleasure.”
“We are always learning the way that heaven acts, but are very shy to
invite it to act upon us, and are very unwilling to submit to the
preparatory process.”
“Self-improvement by the selfish spirit is the most deceitful of all
deceits.”
“While you persevere in washing a man’s face with dirty water, it will
never be clean; you must get pure water to wash with.”
“A child is a religious being prior to its being an intellectual being;
and must not be turned away from the divine order.”
----------
AN AFTERNOON AT ST. LAZARE. 683
We paid a visit yesterday (Sunday) to St. Lazare, and all that we saw
and heard there struck us as so interesting, and so entirely different
from our preconceived notions concerning that ill-famed centre of
crime and punishment, that we cannot but think our readers will
likewise be interested in hearing a detailed and accurate account of
it.
We had been told that the famous _pétroleuse_, charged with the murder
of Monseigneur Surat, was still there, and we could not resist the
opportunity offered us by a friend of going to see this extraordinary
type of female ferocity--the woman who put a pistol to the prelate’s
head, and, when he mildly asked her what he had done to her that she
should hate him so, replied: “You are a priest!” and shot him on the
spot. On arriving, however, we found that she had left for Versailles
the night before. There were still fourteen of her terrible compeers
remaining out of the four hundred and thirty that had been taken on
the barricades and in the general saturnalia of the Commune and locked
up in St. Lazare.
We visited the prison from beginning to end. Nothing surprised us so
much as the gentleness of the _régime_, and the absence of all mystery
or personal restraint in the management of the prisoners. The jail had
nothing of the repulsive paraphernalia of a prison about it, and but
for its massive walls, its vast proportions, and a certain
indescribable gloom in the atmosphere, inseparable, we suppose, from
the mere presence of such a population, one might very well have
mistaken it for an orphanage or any ordinary asylum conducted by a
religious community.
The _salles_ are magnificently spacious and lofty, with broad, high
windows opening on courts; there are four courts--_préaux_ they are
called--one after another, within the precincts of the prison; the
beds are like hospital beds; and there was nothing in the dress of the
women, or the manner of the nuns toward them, to tell an uninitiated
visitor that they were not patients rather than prisoners and
malefactors of the worst kind. There was the same silence brooding
over the place, the same quiet regularity in all the arrangements, the
same supernatural sort of cleanliness that one never sees anywhere but
in convents. The population of the prison varies from 1,200 to 1,800,
and the government of these dangerous and desperate subjects is
committed to the sole charge of a community of religious called
_Sœurs de Marie-Joseph_. They are fifty in all. Their dress is black
serge, with a black veil lined with a light-blue one. They were
founded at the close of the last century by a Lyonnese lady, whose
name the superioress told us, but we forgot it.
It was just two o’clock when we arrived, and the superioress and
another nun gave up assisting at vespers in order to show us over the
house, which from its immense size takes two hours to visit in detail.
The prisoners are divided into several categories, and are kept
distinctly separate from each other. There are first the
_Prévenues_, who are put in on an accusation which has not been 684
investigated; then the _Détenues_, against whom proof is forthcoming,
and who are awaiting their trial; then there are the _Jugées_, of whom
the categories are various, as will be seen. These classes are never
allowed to come in contact, even accidentally, with each other; they
do not even meet at meals. Those who are condemned to one year’s
imprisonment remain at St. Lazare, but if the sentence extends to a
year and a day, they are sent off to one of the _Succursales_. When
their term is expired (those who are sentenced to a year only), they
may continue at St. Lazare if they choose. Many of them, touched with
grace, and sincerely converted from their evil courses, dread going
back to old scenes and temptations that have proved so fatal to them,
and beg to be kept as _filles de service_ for the work of the house,
or in the workshops, etc., and they are never refused. The superioress
said they made very active official servants, and it is very seldom
they fall away from their good resolves, and have to be expelled or
punished. We were passing through one of the passages when a sudden
noise of voices from the court made us go to the window and look out.
We saw a troop of prisoners pouring out into the yard; they were
running about, laughing and chatting, and apparently enjoying their
momentary liberty with the zest of school-boys.
“Who are these, _ma mère_?” we inquired.
“_Hélas!_” The exclamation was accompanied by a sufficiently expressive
gesture.
“They are generally a very numerous class here,” she explained; “but
just now there are but some two hundred of them; the _pétroleuses_
were largely recruited from their ranks, and great numbers of them
have been sent on to Versailles.”
Some one asked if these unfortunates were more refractory than the
other prisoners, thieves, etc.
“As a rule, they are less so,” replied the nun; “we hardly ever are
obliged to have recourse to the _gardiens_ with them, and we have more
frequent conversions amongst them than any other class of prisoners.
There comes a time to many of them, especially if they have had any
seeds of religious belief sowed in their minds in childhood, when the
future both of this world and the next comes on them with a sense of
horror, and then grace has an easy task with them. I could tell you of
miracles wrought in the souls of these poor sinners that would sound
like tales out of the lives of the saints, and we have had deathbeds
among them little short of saintly. But, again, we too often see all
our efforts fail, and they reject grace with a sort of demoniacal
obduracy, and go back to their old lives without a moment’s passing
compunction: nothing seems to touch them or frighten them.”
We asked if the nuns were not afraid of them, if they never threatened
or insulted them.
“Oh! never!” replied the superioress emphatically; “the command we
have over them, and the way they yield obedience and respect to us, is
almost miraculous. You see these poor outcasts down there; I suppose
there is nothing in the world more lost or degraded than they are;
they are the lowest specimens of the lowest stratum of vice and every
species of depravity. Well, the youngest nun in the community is as
safe in the middle of them as if they were all honest _mères de famille_.
I have been a religious twenty-two years, and out of that ten years at
St. Lazare, and I have never known them use an expression to any of 685
us that called for reprimand.”
We may add that she said the great majority of these offenders were
girls from the provinces, young and inexperienced for the most part,
and who come to Paris expecting to make their fortune, and unprepared
for the temptations awaiting them in this great trap for souls.
We saw the words _Oratoire Israelite, Oratoire Protestant_, painted
over two doors, and the latter suggested the inquiry whether there
were occasionally any English women amongst the inmates of St. Lazare.
“Oh! yes, I am sorry to say we have a good many English,” said the
mother; and then, shaking her head and smiling, she added: “And I am
sorry to tell you that they are the most unmanageable of all, for they
are generally given to drink, and when this is the case they are like
mad-women and we can do nothing with them. A little while ago we had
one who got into such a fearful fit of fury that it was necessary to
put her in the lock-up; her shrieks were so loud that they were heard
half over the place, and terrified the young _détenues_; toward evening
she grew so outrageous that the _gardiens_ were sent to put her into
the strait-waistcoat--they are powerful men with strong hands and iron
nerves, and trained to the work--but she baffled four of them for two
hours; they were not able to seize or hold her; at last they gave it
up in despair, and said: It is no use, we must go for _les sœurs_!
One of them came to fetch me, and beg me to come or send some one to
help them. He was trembling in every limb, and the perspiration was
pouring from his face as if he had been wrestling with a wild animal.
I took one of the nuns with me, and we went down to the prison, where
we were obliged to spend the whole night with the prisoner, coaxing
and caressing her, before we got her to calm down and cease
shrieking.”
We asked to what class in life the English culprits generally
belonged--if they were exclusively of the lowest? The superioress
said, on the contrary, they were often persons very _comme il faut_
in their manners, and evidently had had an education far above the
class of domestic servants--some of them were in fact quite like
ladies; she believed they were mostly governesses, or teachers who
come over to Paris in search of situations or lessons, and, not
finding either, are driven by hunger and despair to steal, or do
worse; but theft is generally the offence of the English prisoners.
“Sometimes, indeed,” said the superioress, “it makes us laugh to hear
the account of the thefts they commit, there is often something so
comical in the way they do it, and the cunning and dexterity they
display are beyond belief; the most accomplished French _filou_ cannot
hold a candle to them.”
Sad as this testimony was, it could not be quite a surprise to any one
living in Paris who had seen much of the class of English alluded to,
but it will come probably as a new and terrible revelation to many in
England; and if this paper should fall into the hands of any lone,
friendless English girl hesitating about coming to Paris to earn her
bread, the writer prays God she may ponder on the foregoing statement,
and think twice before embarking on so perilous a venture.
Several _salles_ are filled with a class of prisoners called _jeunes
insoumises_; they are all very young, some merely children of the day;
they are not always actual criminals, sometimes they are only subjects
with dangerous propensities beyond the control of parents, and they
are sent here to be trained to better ways; especial pains are directed 686
to these juvenile offenders, and the result is often very consoling.
The superioress said they had lately had a baby of six years old
brought in for stealing. “It was only a cake that tempted the poor
little mite,” said the mother deprecatingly, “but she was very naughty
and unmanageable otherwise, and the parents were glad of a pretext to
get rid of her for a time.”
It was not only of such innocent culprits as this that the superioress
spoke with indulgence, her large-hearted charity took in all the lost
inhabitants of the dismal abode in which she dwelt and toiled; and
there was something unspeakably touching in the way she every now and
then seemed to try as it were to excuse the worst among them, to plead
for them indirectly by showing up any remnant of good in them. We met
the women we mentioned our seeing out at recreation on their way along
a corridor; they walked singly, with their arms crossed; we were quite
close to them as they passed us; and anything more ignoble than their
features it would be difficult to conceive--the expression of the
faces was scarcely human; they resembled vicious animals in human
shape rather than women. This struck us all so forcibly that we could
not help making the remark to the superioress. She seemed positively
hurt, as if we had said something personally unkind to her, and, on my
expressing some pagan surprise at it, she broke out into such a tender
pleading for “those dear souls whom our Lord longs for and that cost
him so dear” that, though I felt thoroughly rebuked, I could not be
sorry for having called out her protest. It was like having laid one’s
hand roughly and unawares on a vibrating instrument that sent out a
strain of heavenly music.
“Oh!” she continued, with such a look as I shall never forget, “if we
only knew what the value of a soul is, how precious it is in the eyes
of God, we would never look with disgust at the poor wretched body
that holds it; but I assure you when one comes near to those poor
sinners the disgust soon wears off, and we think of nothing but their
souls, their precious, immortal souls, that were bought at such a
price!”
The more we listened to her and observed her, the less surprised we
were at the universal respect, worship I might almost call it, that
greeted her presence everywhere--it was so spontaneous and so free
from anything like fear or servility. As soon as she appeared at the
door of a work-room, or a class, or a dormitory, the prisoners rose
immediately to salute her; and several times I noticed some of them
make signs to others who were not looking, or touch them on the
shoulder, to stand up and welcome the mother. She generally said a
word to them _en passant_: “Good-morning, my children! Are you behaving
well?” etc., and then there was a ripple of curtsies and a perfect
clamor of “Yes, mother, thank you!” and the hard, bad faces would
brighten for one moment with a smile.
The influence of the nuns with the prisoners is indeed little less
than a permanent miracle, Among other instances of it, the superioress
told us the following: “A desperate woman, charged with misdemeanors
of the worst kind, was brought to the prison. She was the daughter of
a butcher, and,” added the superioress, laughing, “I beg you to
believe that her manners were just what might have been expected.” A
few days after her arrival she broke out into a fit of mad fury, and
the _gardiens_ had to be sent for to take her to the _cachot_; but as
soon as she saw them enter the _salle_, she drew a huge pair of scissors 687
from her pocket--how she came by it we never discovered--and, holding
it open and pointed at them with one hand, she beckoned them with the
other to come on, yelling all the while like a raging lioness. The men
tried to terrify her, to dodge her, but it was all useless, she
baffled every attempt to seize her. They gave it up as hopeless, and
came for me. She no sooner saw me than she cried out: ‘Send them away,
and I will go with you; but I will never move a foot with these men!’
I sent them away, and told her to give me the scissors; she gave it at
once, and then I took her by the hand and led her off without a word.
“On another occasion, one section of prisoners got up a scheme for
killing the _gardiens_. They were to tie their wooden _sabots_ into
clusters of eight together, and when the _gardiens_ came to convey
some refractory subject to the _cachot_, the others were to fling
several batches of these formidable missiles at their heads. The
effect must have been fatal, but fortunately there was some delay in
the appearance of the _gardiens_, and the prisoners, having all ready,
grew impatient, and at last, losing all control, they began to yell
and call out for them and brandish their _sabots_ furiously. The nun
who was in waiting ran down to warn the _gardiens_ not to come up, and
then came to tell me what had happened, and to consult about sending
for the soldiers, who are always ready at the _poste_ outside the
prison; the _gardiens_ were frightened, and advised this being done. I
thought, however, the storm would subside without having recourse to
such an extreme measure. I was not the least afraid of the women
personally; I knew they would never lay a finger on one of _us_,
whatever their fury might be, so I walked into the midst of them.
“‘What is this row about?’ I said. ‘I am ashamed of you; let me hear
no more of it.’ Then taking the ringleader--we always know the one to
pitch upon--I told her I must put her in prison; she made no
resistance, only stipulating that the _gardiens_ were not to touch
her.”
“Are the _gardiens_ cruel to them that they hate them so much?” I
asked.
“No, never,” she answered; “they have no opportunity for it if they
felt so inclined; but they represent strength and justice, whereas the
nuns represent only weakness and pity; the prisoners resent the one,
but not the other.”
Some one asked the superioress if she had ever known a conspiracy
attempted to kill or hurt any of the sisters. She replied never, on
which we related to her an episode of the Roman prisons, told us
recently by the Papal Nuncio. The female prisons in Rome are, like St.
Lazare, conducted entirely by nuns, without even the moral support of
a _poste_ at the gates to enforce their authority. One day a plot was
organized for doing away with the nuns and making their own escape
from the prison. The prisoners were sixty in number and the nuns
twelve, so the scheme offered little serious difficulty. It was agreed
that on a certain day when all the community were assembled with the
prisoners in the workroom, the latter were to seize the nuns and fling
them out of the windows into the yard. The signal agreed upon was the
close of the work-hour, when the superioress clapped her hands for
them to put aside their work. The secret was so well kept that not a
hint transpired, but the superioress felt instinctively there was
something abnormal brewing. She had no apprehension at the moment, 688
however, and gave the signal as usual when the clock struck the hour.
No one moved. She repeated it. Still no one stirred. She gave it a
third time more emphatically, and then the leader of the band walked
straight up to her and struck her a blow on the face. The meek
disciple of Jesus quietly knelt down, turned the other cheek, and
said:
“If I have done you any harm, tell me so, but if not, why do you
strike me?”
The woman fell upon her knees, burst into tears, and confessed
everything. When the superioress had heard her to the end, she said:
“Now, my daughter, I must take you to the dungeon; you know this is my
duty.”
“Yes, mother, I know it is,” and she gave her hand, and let herself be
led away as meekly as a lamb.
How omnipotent is the power of love, and how lovely this world would
be if love were allowed to rule over it everywhere!
Before we had finished our inspection of the house, we went to
benediction in the prison chapel. There was a short sermon first on
the gospel of the day. About eight hundred of the prisoners were
present. Some were yawning, and evidently only there because they
could not help themselves, others assisted with edifying devotion, but
all were respectful in their attitude and demeanor. The organ was
played by one of the nuns, and the choir, was formed of prisoners from
the class already alluded to. The singing was not very scientific, but
it struck us all as peculiarly touching, the more so, no doubt, from
the associations connected unconsciously with the choristers. The
superioress said it was looked upon as a great privilege to sing in
the choir, and it is held out as a reward for sustained efforts and
good conduct. As we saw the little altar lighted up, and the golden
rays of the monstrance shining down upon the singular congregation,
one could not but think what a grand and beautiful manifestation of
redeeming love it was, this presence of the God of holiness, a willing
prisoner in such a temple. There were the Sisters of Marie-Joseph,
women of the purest, most unblemished lives, self-devoted victims to
the God who died on Calvary for outcasts and sinners, kneeling side by
side in unloathing sisterhood with the vilest offscourings of this
great Babylon. A sight wonderful beyond all human understanding if the
mystery were not explained to us by the voice from out the little
crystal prison-house: “I came to seek sinners, and to dwell with
them.... And whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do likewise
to me.... And there is more joy in heaven for the return of one sinner
than for ninety-nine of the just.”
And many are the joys given to him and his saints by the inmates of
this great emporium of sinners. Last All Saints’ day five hundred of
the prisoners approached the sacraments, some in the most admirably
penitent spirit, but all of their own free will, and for the moment at
least with hearts touched by grace and turned away from evil. They
were prepared for the feast by a retreat of eight days, preached by a
Marist father.
After benediction we resumed our inspection, and came finally to the
_pétroleuses_. There was nothing in the room where they were, or their
surroundings, to distinguish them from the other prisoners, and if the
superioress had not whispered to us as we were entering the dormitory
that these were the women, we should never have suspected the bright,
orderly room to be the den of wild beasts it was. An American lady who 689
was of our party amused the nuns by asking repeatedly: “But where are
the wicked ones?” She could not persuade herself--and indeed it was
difficult--that the hundreds of women we saw so gently ruled, and held
as it were with silken cords, were the most dangerous and abandoned
characters of the metropolis. The fourteen _pétroleuses_ were not
dressed in the prison livery, but wore their own clothes: some of them
were very spruce and comfortable, but all were tidy and clean--none of
them had a poverty-stricken look. They were nearly all of them
standing in sullen silence beside their beds; one woman was dandling a
baby, a white-faced, shrivelled little object, tricked out in a fine
blue frock with little flounces. We think we said there had been four
hundred and thirty of these _pétroleuses_ in the prison. The superioress
said they had behaved very well there, and never once obliged the
soldiers to interfere. They were cold-blooded, defiant creatures, but
this was not their sphere of action; they bore no ill-will to the
sisters; quite the contrary, many shed tears on going away. They fell
into the discipline of the prison with great docility as to hours and
rules, and seldom broke silence. On one point only they were
intractable--they would not work.
“It’s bad enough to be conquered and butchered by Versailles,” they
would answer, “but we are not going to work for them.” And neither
threats nor entreaties could induce them to take a needle in their
hand, or to sit down to a sewing-machine. It was no use explaining to
them that they would not be working for Versailles, that they would
work for themselves, and might buy extra food at the _cantine_ with
their day’s earnings; no, they got it into their heads that Versailles
would in some way or other be the better for their working, and
nothing could get it out of them. The very name of Versailles used to
rouse them to fury; it was like a red rag to a bull. They boasted of
their exploits during the Commune as things to glory in. One swore she
had set fire to five buildings, and her only regret was that she had
been too late to set fire to St. Lazare. Many of her companions
expressed the same regret with quiet effrontery, that would have been
amusing if it had not been so appalling. Every one of them declared
that if it were to begin over again, they would do just the same, only
better, _because now they had more experience_.
“And what is your opinion, _ma mère_?” we said; “do you think it will
begin again, and that the _pétroleuses_ are still in existence, or was
it a type born with the Commune, and passed away with it?”
She replied unhesitatingly that she believed it would begin again, and
that the _pétroleuses_ would come out in greater force than ever; that
they were neither daunted nor disarmed by the failure of the Commune,
but rather infuriated by defeat, and more resolute and reckless than
before--reckless to a degree that only bad women can be, and ready to
stake body and soul on their revenge. She said that the conduct of
Versailles was weak and ill-judged beyond her comprehension; that they
had far better have left these women free at once on the plea that
they were women, if they did not mean to deal out their deserts to
them; but now these desperate creatures were exasperated by
incarceration, and by a mockery of a trial that either liberated them
or sentenced them to a punishment they knew perfectly well the 690
government did not mean to carry out. It was like letting loose so
many bloodhounds on France to set these women at large again.
“We have seen them _de près_,” continued the superioress, “and we are
one and all convinced that the next attempt will be worse than the
first; we have terrible days in store--the _pétroleuses_ have not said
their last word.”
Speaking of the Commune led to our asking about her own experiences
under it. It appears that the employees at St. Lazare, the director,
inspector-general, and their assistants, were among the first turned
out, and agents of the Hôtel de Ville installed in their places. The
first thing these guardians of public justice did was to set free
one-half of the population, such as were available for the public
services; and able servants they proved themselves on the barricades
and as incendiaries. To account for and in some measure palliate the
superhuman ferocity displayed by the women of the Commune, we may as
well mention here a fact not generally known, and which was told to us
by a distinguished medical man, who was here all through that terrible
saturnalia, and by a Sister of Charity, who could also speak from
personal knowledge. It would seem that the snuff dealt out to the
people from the government manufactories was mixed in large
proportions with gunpowder. The effect of this ingredient, taken in
very small quantities, is to excite the brain abnormally, but taken in
large ones it brings on a kind of savage delirium tremens. The wine
distributed to the _pétroleuses_ on the barricades and elsewhere was
also heavily charged with some such element of madness. It seems to us
that it is rather a consolation to hear this, for though it reveals a
diabolical instinct of soul-hatred in the few, it explains, on the
other hand, how it was that occasionally we saw young and hitherto
mild, inoffensive women suddenly transformed into demons.
The superioress said that for the first three weeks that the nuns did
duty for the Commune, nothing could exceed the respect and
consideration they received from them.
“They were as docile as little girls to us,” she said, “and never did
anything without coming to consult us. The _inspecteur-general_ named
by the Commune happened to have formerly been a clerk at the prison.
My surprise when I saw him in his new character, and with such
credentials, was great; but he seemed himself very much ashamed, and
when I asked him what had induced him to join the Commune, he replied
that it was really devotion to the nuns; he had accepted the office
because he knew we would want a protector, and he preferred being on
the spot to watch over us. It was not laughing matter, or I could have
laughed at his audacity. And he actually pleaded this argument on his
trial at Versailles, and was acquitted on it! He had always been a
well-conducted, honest man, and I am not sure but in the bottom of his
heart this good intention toward us may not have been mixed up with a
great many other less worthy ones. During all the time he was in
constant communication with me, he never had the courage once to raise
his eyes to my face. He told us a good deal about what was going on
outside, and especially what the women were doing. He spoke in
enthusiastic praise of their spirit and courage. He said the fort of
Montrouge was lost one day but for a girl of seventeen, who, seeing
the soldiers demoralized, and the gunners abandoning their guns and
turning to fly, rushed up to one of them, and seized a light and put 691
it to the cannon, and so mocked the cowards, and taunted them all with
cowardice and want of mettle, that she rallied every man of them and
saved the place. But for this Versailles would have taken it. Ten
minutes later, and the defence was abandoned. ‘Had it not been for
this plucky little _diablesse_, we were lost!’ he exclaimed. Such
traits as this prepared us for the _pétroleuses_ of a few weeks later,
but he only saw patriotism and valor in them.”
Things went on very amicably between the gentlemen of the Commune and
the sisters for three weeks. Then a change came over them. They were
not openly rude, but there was what the superioress described as
restrained fury in their manner toward the nuns, and the latter felt
that the blood-fever was rising in them, and that they would soon
break out into open mutiny. The superioress felt this more strongly
than the rest, and she was sorely perplexed how to get her flock out
of the way of the wolves while it was yet time. It was no easy matter,
for, as she quaintly said, “One cannot send off fifty religious like
fifty pins, in a box by mail,” and in the present state of mind of the
Communists, to awake suspicion was to have the whole community seized
and locked up forthwith. The first thing to be done was to procure
permission from the Hôtel de Ville. She had been obliged to go of late
several times to the prefecture on one business or another connected
with her functions in the prison, so the authorities there knew her,
and had always treated her with marked civility. She said that the
first time she went there the faces of the so-called officials struck
her as demoniacal, they were all of them half-drunk--men taken from
the gutters of Belleville and Villette to fill offices of whose
commonest outward forms they had no idea, yet they were as deferential
to herself and the nun who accompanied her as so many priests might
have been. This did not prevent her saying to her companion as soon as
they were alone: “Well, if we did not believe in hell, the faces we
have seen to-day would have revealed it to us.”
She applied for a permission to leave, and got it without any
difficulty. She kept it in her pocket all that day, and the next
morning she seemed to hear a voice saying to her interiorly: _Now is
the moment_; send them off! The exodus was planned well, and carried
out so discreetly, the nuns going in threes and fours at a time, that
not a shadow of suspicion dawned on the employees--their jailers as
they now considered them. All that day the superioress kept constantly
with them, never letting them lose sight of her for a quarter of an
hour at a time, coming and going perpetually, and making future
arrangements for one thing or another, so as to put them more
completely off the scent. It was only when evening came and there were
but eight nuns in the house besides herself, that the flight was
discovered. The rage of the director was undisguised. But if he could
not catch the fugitives, he could revenge himself on the devoted ones
who had shielded their flight at the peril of their own lives. The
superioress was at work in the midst of the little remnant of her
flock, when he rushed into the room, pistol in hand. A few words
passed between them, angry on his part, calm and resolute on hers,
then with an oath he left the room abruptly.
“I knew as well as if he had told me,” she said, “that he was gone to
see if there was a vacant cell to put me in. I did not feel
terrified--God gives such strong graces in moments like that!--but I 692
felt the same kind of internal voice saying to me: Now is your time;
take the others and fly!
“We hurried down the stairs just as we were and went out. We turned to
the left, and walked on as fast as we could, without running, toward
the _Gare du Nord_. We could hardly have turned the corner of the
street when the director was in pursuit of us. _Les Détenues_, who
saw us leave the house and take to the left, called out to him: To the
right, citoyen! They are not forty yards ahead! He followed the
direction, and this saved us. We reached the station just as the train
was about to move. The guards saw us coming, and cried out to us to
make haste and jump in. ‘But our tickets! We have not taken them!’ I
said.
“‘Never mind, jump in! You will pay at the other end,’ and they
hustled us into the nearest carriage. We had not seated ourselves when
the director appeared on the platform pistol in hand, and crying out
frantically to the train to stop. But it moved on, and landed us
safely at Argenteuil.”
A few days after the _Sœurs Marie-Joseph_ had cleared out from St.
Lazare, the nuns of Picpus were taken there. This the superioress
thought was one reason why the officials were anxious to get them out
of their way; they meant to put the others there, and they did not
want any inconvenient witnesses of their own proceedings.
When we had seen all that was to be seen in the vast building, the
superioress took us to the private chapel of the community. It was
formerly the cell of St. Vincent of Paul, that is to say, the space
occupied by the sanctuary; the altar stands where his little bed used
to be, and the window step is worn away by the pressure of his feet,
when his increasing infirmities obliged him to have recourse to the
solace of a footstool. The prison itself was formerly a Lazarist
monastery; the refectory is exactly as it was in the time of St.
Vincent, unchanged in all except its occupants; and the great, sombre
corridors echoed for twenty years to the footsteps of the sweet
apostle of charity. His memory is held in great veneration throughout
the prison, and the population speak of him with a sort of rough,
filial affectionateness that, the nuns told us, is often very
touching; they seem to look on him as a friend who ought to stand by
them.
I had nearly forgotten one incident in our visit that had a peculiar
beauty of its own. We were passing by the open door of what seemed an
infirmary; all the beds were occupied, and there were several nuns
sitting in the room, when one of them ran out and said:
“Oh! _ma mère_, you will not pass without coming to say _bonjour_ to
our old women. Ever since they heard you were showing the house, they
have been watching for you.”
The superioress said it was late, and she really had not time just
now, but the nuns begged harder, and said that the old women knew she
was going into retreat that evening, so they would not see her for
eight days, and the old women, seeing they were in danger of being
refused, began to cry out so piteously that the mother, asking us if
we would not mind walking down the ward, yielded, and we went in.
These old women are all infirm and incurable, and have been sent as
such from one hospital or another to St. Lazare. Their delight when
the superioress came in and spoke a word to each was almost rapturous.
I stood to speak to one old soul, but instead of detailing her own
aches and pains after the usual manner of those dear, blessed,
garrulous poor people, she burst out confidentially into ecstatic 693
praises of _notre mère_--how sweet and kind she was, and how she loved
them all, and what she did for them, and what an angel she was
altogether, “as indeed all the good sisters were,” the good soul made
haste to assure us. We found, on comparing notes with our friends,
that those to whom they spoke had improved the opportunity in the same
way. It seemed quite a treat to them to find an audience for their
grateful praises of the _Sœurs_. Indeed, as far as our view of them
went, the Sisters of Marie-Joseph fully justify the love they receive
so plentifully. The superioress is what the French would call _une
maîtresse femme_, a combination of energy and gentleness, with a
certain frank brightness of manner that is very winning to a stranger,
and must be a great help, independent of stronger agencies, in
enabling her to win the confidence and disarm the rebellious spirit of
the women she has to deal with. It was wonderful to watch her as she
passed on from _salle_ to _salle_, saying just the right little word
to all of them, and bringing a smile on all the faces, old and young,
good and bad. Her manner, while it was perfectly simple and familiar,
never lost its dignity; but there was not the faintest shadow of that
spirit which too often hinders the salutary influence of virtue over
vice--keep off; for I am holier than you! With these infirm old women
she was affectionate and caressing as a mother, petting them like
children, and encouraging their fearless familiarity toward herself.
They had been here all through the Commune, they told us, and
witnessed from their windows--the infirmary is on the ground
floor--all the scenes enacted in the court by _ces dames_, as they
mockingly styled them, who had come to replace the _Sœurs_. But the
worst of that terrible interval to them was the terror they were in of
being burnt to death. They saw the flames rising on all sides from the
conflagrations in the neighborhood of St. Lazare, and they were in
momentary expectation of seeing the prison itself fired. The doors
were opened for them to fly, but “_à quoi bon, puisque nous n’avions
pas de jambes pour fuir?_” they observed jocosely. This was the last
_salle_ we saw. Before the superioress took leave of the incurables,
she asked them to pray for the nuns during their retreat, which was to
begin that evening. They promised in chorus that they would, and one
said: “We will offer up all our suffering this week for the good
sisters,” and all the others pledged themselves to do the same.
So ended our visit to St. Lazare. It was a sad and yet an unutterably
consoling one. We hear a great deal about the atheism and immorality
and wickedness of Paris--and God knows there is plenty of them--but
there is much also that is bright and pure and beautiful mixed up with
the bad, if only we looked for it and proclaimed it. We would find the
pearls of purity, and the rubies of charity, and the emeralds of hope,
and the salt of the Holy Spirit, scattered everywhere amidst the
general corruption, healing and redeeming it.
----------
THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION [144] 694
The Labor Question has become one of the most formidable
questions--perhaps the most formidable question--of the day; and the
worst feature of the question is that, though it has been looming up
in the distance for nearly a century, and constantly coming nearer and
nearer, and more and more pressing for a solution, the statesmen,
reformers, and philanthropists of no country seem to know what answer
to give it, or how to treat it. There is no lack of nostrums, and
every petty politician is ready with his “Morrison pill”; but no one
gives a satisfactory diagnosis of the case, and the remedies offered
or applied have served thus far only to aggravate the symptoms of the
disease.
There is a very general conviction among the workingmen themselves
that, in the distribution of the joint products of capital and labor,
capital gets the lion’s share. Capitalists, or they who can command
capital or its substitute, credit, grow rich, become millionaires,
from the profits of the labor they employ, while the laborer himself,
with the most rigid economy and frugality, can barely keep soul and
body together, and not always even that. Yet, if we look at the
millions deposited by the laboring classes in our savings-banks, and
the large sums collected from them for eleemosynary and other purposes
not necessarily included in the expenses of living, this statement seems
exaggerated. Then, too, the majority of the millionaires with
us, and, perhaps, in England and France, began life as workmen, or, at
least, without capital and with very little credit.
It is not easy to say precisely what the special grievances of the
workingmen are, at least in our country, since comparatively few of
the wealthy or easy classes of to-day inherited their wealth, or had
to start with any appreciable advantages, pecuniary, educational, or
social, over their compeers who have remained in the proletarian
class. The International Association of Workingmen do not tell us very
distinctly what their special grievances are, nor can we gather them
from the eloquent lecture of their mouthpiece, Mr. Wendell Phillips,
the candidate of the labor unions of Massachusetts for governor of
that state. The evils he complains of, if evils, grow out of what is
called “modern civilization,” and seem to us to be inseparable from
it. This is also clearly his opinion, and _The Dublin Review_ shows
that it is the view taken by the Internationals in England and France.
Mr. Phillips says:
“Modern civilization is grand in seeming large and generous in
some of its results, but, at the same time, hidden within are
ulcers that confront social science and leave it aghast. The
students of social science, in every meeting that gathers itself,
in every debate and discussion, confess themselves at their wits’
end in dealing with the great social evils of the day. Nobody
that looks into the subject but recognizes the fact that the
disease is very grave and deep; the superficial observer does not
know the leak in the very body of the ship, but the captain and 695
crew are suffering the anticipation of approaching ruin.
Gentlemen, I am not here with the vain dream that we shall ever
abolish poverty. My creed of human nature is too bitter for that.
There will always be men that drink, and as long as there are
such, there will always be poor men--shiftless men. There are
always half-made men--nobody knows why they were born.
“Is civilization a failure? Stretch out your gaze over all the
civilized world. There are, perhaps, in Christendom two or three
hundred millions of people, and one-half of them never have
enough to eat. And even in this country one-half of the people
have never had enough of mental food. All over the world one-half
of Christendom starves either bodily or mentally. That is no
exaggeration. You may go to France or England, and find a million
of men that never saw meat once a year. Take your city, and go
down into the very slums of existence, where human beings by the
thousands live year in and year out in dwellings which no man in
Fifth Avenue would trust his horses in for twelve hours. I will
take the great social spectre that confronts social science the
world over--prostitution, the social ulcer that eats into the
nineteenth century. And everybody who studies the subject will
confess that the great root from which it grows is that the
poverty of one class makes it the victim of the wealth of
another. Give woman her fair chance in her own fields of
enterprise, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will disdain to buy
diamonds and velvets with the wages of shame. Give man his fair
chance in the world of labor and enterprise, and ninety-nine out
of a hundred men will disdain to steal. The grog-shops of the
great cities have always appointed the municipalities as their
own standing, committees. And this is at once the cause and
effect of the poverty of the masses. I have known men who were
intemperate in Boston cured by being sent to Paris. Why? Because
in the brighter life, the more generous stimulant, the great
variety of interest in the European capital, he found something
that called out his nobler nature, starved out his appetites. So
it is with the intemperance of a nation; and to cure it, you must
supplement their life with the stimulus of the soul. Why is it
that three-fourths of the criminals are of the poorer classes?
Why do the students of crime tell you that when you have taken
out about fifteen per cent. of the criminals, consisting of the
enterprising, energetic, and intelligent, the rest are below par
bodily and mentally? Because they are the children, grandchildren,
or great-grandchildren of persons who were bodily and mentally
weak. Out of these weak ones the devil selects his best tools.
Feed that class better, and you will empty your prisons.”
This plainly enough attributes the evils the workingmen seek to remedy
to modern civilization, which enables the few to become rich and
leaves the many poor, destitute, festering in ignorance and vice. M.
Desmoulins, in his _Apology for the Internationals_, as quoted by _The
Dublin Review_, says: “The Parisian Red, far from being out of the
pale of human nature, is only a spontaneous product of what is
pompously styled modern civilization--a civilization that, resting to
this hour on war between nation and nation, town and town, farm and
farm, men and men, is still in many respects sheer barbarism.” As far
as we are able to collect the views of the Association, it attributes
the undefined grievances of the proletarian class to no one specific
cause, but to modern civilization in general. In this, if the
workingmen confine their objection to material civilization--the only
civilization the age boasts or recognizes--we are not disposed to
quarrel with them. Yet we all remember the outcry raised in all
classes of society and from all quarters against the Holy Father,
because he refused to form an alliance of the church with modern
civilization, and for his supposed condemnation of it in the Syllabus.
The International Association of Workingmen, whose members are spread
over nearly the whole world, and are numbered by millions, is a vast 696
organized revolt against this boasted civilization of this nineteenth
century. And so far it is not wholly without excuse, and even much may
be said in its defence, though their proposed substitute for it may be
utterly indefensible.
Modern material civilization, dating from the Peace of Utrecht in
1713, and more especially from the accession of the House of Hanover
to the English throne, and the accession to power in England of
what in the time of Swift and Addison was called the Urban
party--money-changers, bankers, traders, merchants, and
manufacturers--has been based on capital employed in trade and
industry, in opposition to capital invested in land and agriculture.
It is a shopkeeping and manufacturing and maritime civilization,
essentially and eminently a burgher civilization, and resulting
especially in the burgher class, or, as the French say, the
_bourgeoisie_. A civilization based on material interests, and
proposing the multiplication and amassing of material goods,
necessarily produces the state of things which excites the opposition
of Mr. Phillips and the Internationals. It creates necessarily an
antagonism between the interests of capital and labor, and therefore
between the employers, as representatives of capital, and the
employed, or workmen. The interest of capital is to get labor at as
low a rate of wages as possible; the interest of labor is to get as
high a rate of wages as possible. This antagonism is inevitable.
Employers in vain pretend that the interests of capital and labor are
the same. They are not so under a civilization based on Mammon, or
under a civilization that seeks only the advancement of material
interests, and invests capital only for the sake of material profit.
In the struggle, the stronger party, under a material system, is
always sure to succeed. And this is always the party of capital; for
labor seeks employment to live--capital, for profit or gain; and the
capitalist can forego profit more easily than labor can forego
employment, since to live is more urgent than to gain. This secures
the advantage always to the capitalist. The inequality which
necessarily results cannot be overcome by equality of suffrage, or the
extension of suffrage to the proletarian class, as politicians
pretend; for, though numbers may triumph at the polls, the stronger
interest, as our American experience proves, is sure to carry the
victory in the halls of legislation. “The stronger interest in a
country,” said Mr. Calhoun to the writer, “always in the long run
wields the power of the country.”
Universal suffrage, which was defended on the ground that it would
tend to protect labor against capital, has in fact a contrary
tendency, and in practice almost invariably favors capital. The whole
of our legislation--which so favors capital or its substitute, credit,
or which mortgages the future for the present, and makes debt supply
the place of capital, covers the towns with money or business
corporations, and builds up huge monopolies--has grown up under a
system of universal suffrage. In an age and country where material
interests predominate, what the people, capitalists or proletarians,
ask of government is, laws that facilitate the acquisition of wealth;
but when such laws are enacted, not more than one man in a hundred can
avail himself of the facilities they afford.
The great scientific discoveries of which we boast, and which have
wrought such marvellous changes in our modern industrial world, were,
as to their principles, made in a less material age than the present, 697
before the modern burgher civilization was fairly inaugurated; but
their application to the mechanic arts, to production and
transportation, whether by sea or land, has been made since, and
chiefly within the last one hundred years. The introduction of
labor-saving machinery has, to an extent not easily estimated,
superseded human labor, broken up the small domestic industries, as
carding, spinning, and weaving, carried on in the bosom of the family,
and securing it a modest independence, and small farming, carried on
chiefly by the father and his sons, and built up in their place large
industries and large farming, beyond the reach of people of no means
or small means but their labor, and in which human labor is employed
only in the form of labor at wages. The introduction of machinery, or
the working of mills or farms by machinery driven by steam or by
horse-power, requires capital, or an outlay possible only to large
capital or combinations of small capital. Take, for instance, the
steam carder, spinner, and weaver; the mule, jenny, and power-loom;
the patent mower, reaper, and horse-rake; threshing and winnowing
machines--hardly any of them heard of or only beginning to be heard of
in our own boyhood, at least in this country; take the railway and the
locomotive--and you can easily see that modern industry, and in a
measure even agriculture, fall necessarily into the hands of large
capitalists, individual or corporate, and cannot be prosecuted on a
small scale, at least profitably. We have corporations for condensing
milk and making butter and cheese, regardless of our youthful friend
the dairymaid, and for supplying us with ice. Perhaps nothing has
tended so much to enlarge the inequality between capital and labor as
the introduction of labor-saving machinery in nearly all branches of
industry.
We do not make war on labor-saving machinery, which, we have heard it
said, increases the power of capital six hundred million fold, though
that seems to us hardly credible. We could not now do well without it.
We could not well dispense with our cotton and woollen factories, and
go back to the hand-cards, and spinning-wheel, and hand-loom which, in
our own boyhood, were in every farmer’s house; but we cannot forget
that the independence of the laborer--now a laborer at wages, and
obliged to make cash payments for what he consumes--has gone with them
to the advantage of the capitalist. We could not well dispense with
railways, and yet there is no denying that they are monopolies, that
labor cannot compete with them, and that they impose a heavy tax on
labor. They also tend to convert the independent laborer into a
workman at wages, and the freeman into the slave of machinery, to
enrich a few railway presidents and directors, and stock-jobbers.
Then, those great corporations, without souls, are not only stronger
than the laborer, but stronger than the government. No great feudal
lords in France or England were ever more formidable to the crown than
such corporations as the Pennsylvania Central, the New York Central,
the Union Pacific, with our National Bank system, are to the
government, state or general. Neither state legislatures nor Congress
can control them, and they have already made both simply their factor
or agent.
There is a truth which cannot be denied expressed in the following
paragraph from Mr. Phillips’ lecture:
“Now, look at it. You say, why do you find fault with 698
civilization? Tonight is a cold night, and you will go home to
parlors and chambers warmed with the coal of Pennsylvania. Why
don’t you have it here for $3 and $4 a ton? Why don’t you have it
here at an advance of $1 or $2 over what it is sold for at the
mouth of the pit? Because of the gigantic corporations and vast
organizations of wealth. The capitalists gather three or four
millions of tons in your city--sell it when they please, at such
rates as they please, and the poor man struggling for his bread
is the sufferer. A rich man is careful; he won’t put his foot in
any further than allows of its being pulled back. If he heard a
groan coming from the people at something he did, he would
withdraw his investment, for nothing is more timid than wealth.
But let that man take $100,000 or so and put it in with nine
others, and make a capital of $1,000,000; then he is as bold as
Julius Cæsar. He will starve out 13,000 coal miners. The London
_Spectator_ says that the colossal strength of Britain has reason
to dread the jointure of $456,000,000 of railroad capital. How
much more should America have reason to dread such combinations,
when Britain has more than ten times our wealth!”
Yet is there not some compensation to the proletarian class in the
very system which tends so fearfully to increase their numbers and
dependence? Grant that coal might be delivered from the mines in
Pennsylvania in this city at $3 a ton; but suppose there were no
railroads and no railway monopolies, could or would coal from the same
mines be delivered in this city as cheap as it now is? Suppose there
were no railways between this city and the great West, would wheat,
flour, beef, pork, and the other necessaries of life be cheaper for
the laboring class in this city than they now are? Railway companies
may charge exorbitant rates of freight, and yet the laboring classes
get the chief necessaries of life cheaper than they would, other things
being equal or unchanged, without them. Those things might be cheaper
in the localities where they are produced, but not elsewhere. The evil
of these monopolies and corporations is not so much in the enhanced
cost of living chargeable to them, as their multiplication of the
class dependent on capital for employment; and in their power to shape
the action of the government to their special interests. It is far
better for the workman to depend on a single wealthy individual who is
likely to have a soul than on a soulless corporation. The combination
of capital in corporations for industrial or trading purposes founds
an aristocracy, or ruling class, far more humiliating and crushing to
the class below them than aristocracies founded on land and birth,
education and manners.
This is the view taken by the Internationals. They war specially
against the rule of the burgher class, which is now supreme in
society, as formerly were the church, kings, and nobilities. In this
opposition to the rule of the burgher class, supposing the means and
methods of their warfare just and honorable, we confess we might
sympathize with the Internationals, as we have always sympathized with
the working-classes. We never have been able to get up much liking for
an aristocracy based on Mammon, who, Milton tells us, was the meanest
of all the angels that fell, and who, even in heaven, went about head
down, and his eyes fixed on the gold of heaven’s pavement. It is well
for no country when its ruling class are the moneyed or business
class. Yet it would be difficult to say, as to our country at least,
what class can be better trusted with the government, or what class
has more virtue, more nobility of sentiment, chivalric feeling, nobler
aims, or higher purpose. Nothing better from the proletarian class 699
could be expected, and, judging from the Paris Commune, nothing so
good. The workingmen have all the love of money, all the sordid
passions, low views, and degrading vices that can be charged to the
burgher class, and, perhaps, fewer redeeming qualities. Civilization
has descended to the burgher. What would it gain by descending to the
proletary? But let us listen once more to Mr. Phillips:
“I think our civilization is better than anywhere in the world.
Now, gentlemen, you say to me, What do you intend to do? Every
man has a different theory, and I have no panacea. My theory is
only this: I know that a wrong system exists, and that the only
method in these states of turning the brains of the country on
one side is to bring it into conflict, and organize a party. If I
should ask one of your editors to-night to let me indite an
article on labor and capital, very likely he would refuse me, or
if he granted it, it might be because a fanatic like me would
sell a copy or two. But if you will give me 50,000 votes on one
side, and the balance impartially divided between your Fentons
and Conklings and Seymours, I will show you every journal in the
city of New York discussing the question with me. Labor is too
poor to edit a column in a New York journal, but when it comes in
the shape of votes, then those same journals cannot afford to
disregard it. Now, let us organize it. The ultimate view which we
aim at is co-operation, where there is no labor as such, and no
capital as such--where every man is interested proportionately in
the results. How will you reach it? Only by grappling with the
present organizations of power in the nation. It is money that
rivets the chains of labor. If I could, I would abolish every
moneyed corporation in the thirty states. Yet I am not certain
that that would be a wise measure, because it seems probable that
the business of the nineteenth century can hardly be carried on
without corporations; but if it be true that facility and
cheapness of production are solely to be reached by the machinery
of corporations, then I say, gentlemen, that the statesmanship of
this generation is called upon to devise some method by which
wealth may be incorporated and liberty saved. Pennsylvania has
got to find out some method by which Harrisburg may exist without
being the tail to the kite of the Pennsylvania Central.
“I think, in the first place, we ought to graduate taxes. If a
man has a thousand dollars a year and pays a hundred, the man
that has five thousand a year ought to pay five hundred. I would
have a millionaire with forty millions of dollars taxed so highly
that he would only have enough to live comfortably upon.”
That our civilization is the best in the world, it is patriotic to
believe, and under several aspects it no doubt is so, or at least was
so, a few years ago; but the burgher influence, which decides the
action of government, is fast preventing this from continuing to be
so. We were intended by nature to be a great agricultural people, and
we have labored with all the force of the government and artificial
contrivances to become, spite of nature, a great manufacturing and
commercial people, like the people of Great Britain, as if our
territory were as limited as that of the British Isles. Whatever
advantages we possessed over the nations of the Old World in the
beginning, we owed to the extent, cheapness, and fertility of our vast
tracts of unoccupied lands, which enabled the working-man, after a few
years of labor at wages, to become a land-owner, and to become the
cultivator of his own Sabine farm. But the influence of the ruling
classes, with its chief seats in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, has
been steadily exerted since 1824 to deprive the country of these
advantages, and to create as large a proletarian class as possible, so
that no doubt, if, aside from the vast public works, or rather, the
so-called internal improvements undertaken by private corporations, 700
and which give for the time employment to large numbers of workmen,
skilled and unskilled, we now offer any advantages to the laborer over
those he has abroad--at any rate, if we do, those advantages are fast
disappearing.
We are no more favorable to the system of corporations than is Mr.
Phillips; and the writer of this for years opposed with whatever
abilities he had their creation and multiplication. He did so till he
saw opposition could avail nothing to check their growth. No
opposition can avail anything now, since the abolition of slavery has,
in a great measure, identified the great planting interests of the
South with the burgher interests of the North, as it was intended to
do. For this Mr. Phillips is himself in no small degree responsible,
and as an International, or a leader in the labor movement, he is only
trying to undo what he hoped to do as an abolitionist. Philanthropy is
an excellent sentiment when directed by practical wisdom and
knowledge; but, when blindly followed, it creates a hundredfold more
evil than it can cure, even if successful in its special aims. Even
Mr. Phillips doubts if the corporation system can be safely abolished.
We tell him there is no power in the country that can abolish it,
because it governs the general government and nearly all the state
governments. Give Mr. Phillips the fifty thousand votes he asks for,
and the party he wishes to organize, he would, no doubt, become a
power in elections, and could command an important place in the
government for himself, and places also for his friends; but, however
important the place to which he might be elected or appointed, he
would find himself impotent to effect anything against the system he
opposes, or in favor of the system he approves.
Mr. Phillips tells us that his main reliance is on the “education of
the masses.” So do we, only we protest against calling the people who
have rational souls “the masses,” as if they were piles or heaps of
brute matter. But education given by the burgher civilization as
educator, or suffered to be freely given by it, will tend to
perpetuate that civilization, or the very system, social and
industrial, which Mr. Phillips and the Internationals war against, not
to displace or reform it. Let the education of all the children of the
land be entrusted to a society whose principles were so admirably
summed up and approved by a former governor of Massachusetts, namely,
“Let the government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care
of the poor,” how much would the education given do to elevate or
meliorate that society? No order of civilization or society ever does
or ever can educate in reference to a higher ideal than its own. Hence
the reason why the state or secular society cannot be a fit educator
of children and youth, and why all education can be safely entrusted
only to the spiritual society whose ideal is the God-man, perfect, and
the highest conceivable.
Purely secular education proceeds on the assumption that men and
nations always act as well as they know, or that all individuals and
nations will act uniformly in reference to their own interests so far
as they know them--an assumption disproved by every one’s daily
experience, as well as by the universal experience of mankind. Mr.
Phillips ought to know that men who ought to know better are often
carried away by their lusts, their passions, the force of events, and
social and other influences, to act in direct opposition to their 701
better judgment. There are comparatively few of us who cannot say with
the heathen poet:
“Video meliora, proboque,
Deteriora sequor.”
Men do wrong or fail to follow the right less from ignorance than from
passion and infirmity of will. Society could not subsist if founded on
what the philosophers in the last century called enlightened
self-interest, or what Jeremy Bentham called “utility,” or “the
greatest happiness” principle. What is wanted is something stronger
than interest, something stronger than passion, which, while it
enlightens the intellect, gives invincible firmness to the will.
The only power that can control this system, the evils of which Mr.
Phillips points out, while its social and industrial tendencies he
deplores, and adjust the various conflicting interests of society on
the principles of justice and equity, is and must be supernatural. The
English system of checks and balances, of restraining or balancing one
interest by another, is a delusion, as the failure of the experiment
fully proves. It restrains the weaker interests, but strengthens the
stronger, makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer, and hence in no
country do you find larger accumulations of wealth, and side by side
with them a deeper or more widespread poverty or more squalid
wretchedness. There are no resources in the order of nature for a
people that adopts the burgher system, and makes material interests
the great aim of life, from which power can be drawn adequate to
overcome the evils of the system against which the Internationals wage
their relentless war. We can find no deliverance in the natural order,
and must seek it, if anywhere, in the supernatural, that is, in
religion--and in a religion that speak with a supernatural authority,
infuses into the soul a supernatural energy, and lifts it above the
world and its systems or civilizations, above all earthly goods, and
fixes its affections on the Unseen and the Eternal--a religion that
gives light to the intellect and firmness to the will. It is only
education in and by this religion that can avail anything.
But religion is precisely what the Internationals reject, hate, or
despise--what the great body of the workmen in our towns, cities, and
manufacturing villages have ceased to believe, and even with those of
the so-called proletarian class generally who do not formally reject
religion, it has ceased to be a power, to have any hold on the
conscience, and has become a vague tradition or a lifeless form. It is
pretty much the same with the burgher class, and was so with them
before it was so with the proletarian class. Modern civilization
itself is based on atheism, or the purely material order. Hence the
evils the Internationals seek to remedy are the natural and inevitable
result of the new order of civilization, not yet two centuries old.
The Internationals see it, and make war on the existing civilization
for that very reason. But on what principles, and in what interest? On
the principles and in the interests of that very civilization itself.
Their success would simply oust the burgher and put the proletary in
his place. They introduce or propose not a higher and a nobler
civilization, but, so far as there is any difference, a still lower
and more degrading civilization.
The revolution that has been going on in society since the close of
the fourteenth century has had several phases. The first phase was the
union of the burghers and the sovereigns against the Pope and the
feudal nobility, and resulted in the triumph of absolute monarchy 702
in the sixteenth century and the seventeenth. The second phase was the
union of the burghers, or the _tiers état_, and the people or a
portion of them against monarchy and the church, which issued in
establishing the supremacy of the burghers. The third phase is that in
the midst of which we now are, and is--monarchy and the church gone or
assumed to be gone--that of the proletaries against burghers. Neither
of the preceding phases of the revolution effected the good hoped for,
or satisfied the revolutionary appetite, but really aggravated the
social evils it was sought to remedy. The friends of the revolution
said it did not go far enough, and stopped short of the mark. It has
now descended to the bottom, to the lowest stratum, or to the lowest
deep, and proposes to wrest the power from the burgher class and rest
it in the proletarian class. It is some consolation to know that we at
length have reached the last phase of the revolution, and that after
its failure, as fail it will, nothing worse is to be feared. “When
things are at worst, they sometimes mend.”
The principal objection to the Internationals is not that they oppose
what is called modern civilization, or that they seek to remedy
undeniable social evils; but that they seek to do it on false
principles, by inadequate means, and unlawful and even horrible
methods, and can only lose even by success.
The International has absorbed all the other labor unions, and may be
said to represent the whole proletarian class in Europe and America,
and its leaders are avowed atheists; they reject the entire
supernatural order, disdain or contemn all forms of religion, and seek
to redress the material by the material. This alone is sufficient in
itself to condemn them. They reject not only religion, but also
government, or the entire political and civil order. They will have no
God, no king, no aristocracy, no democracy, no law, no court, no
judges, but simply--we can hardly say what. Practically, they will
fall under the authority of irresponsible and despotic leaders,
governing in the name of nobody, and by their own passions or
interests alone. They may aim at positive results, but at present
their means are only adequate to the work of destruction. Thus an
organized and secret, and, when practicable, open war on all religion,
on God, on all authority, all law, and especially on capital or
individual property. What positive result is to follow, Mr. Phillips
confesses his inability to tell.
From Mr. Phillips we learn that they aim at the destruction of the
whole modern industrial system, and propose that the workmen shall
take possession of the establishments created by capitalists,
incorporated or not, and run them on their own account, and share the
profits among themselves, without any indemnification to the owners.
As to land, no individual is to own it or any portion of it--it is to
be made common, and open, as to the usufruct, to any one who chooses
to occupy it. Mr. Phillips says:
“I have another proposition. I think when a man has passed five
years in the service of a corporation, though he may not have
bought a dollar of its stock, he is in a certain sense a
stockholder. He has put his labor and persistency there, and I
think every man who has been employed in a corporation for a year
or two should have a voice in its financial management. In Japan,
when a man dies, his land is left to the state. Do you not think
that is a wiser plan than ours? The land becomes more valuable
through the labor of the whole country, and not by that of the
man who eats off of it. Our great hope in the future is in the 703
education of the masses, for they will yet be our rulers. New
York stood aghast at the defalcation of millions of dollars, but
will you submit to be robbed of hundreds of millions by
monopolists? Fifth Avenue cannot afford to let the Five Points
exist. You cannot get wealth enough to fortify you against
discontented ignorance within your reach. The lesson taught by
Chicago is that wealth cannot afford to neglect poverty.”
How the matter would be adjusted if two or more men should happen to
insist on occupying the same house and lot we do not know. They would
all have an equal right, or one would have as good a right to it as
another, and, there being no authority, no law, and none of them
having any moral or religious principle, they would most likely, all
having the pride and obstinacy natural to the human heart, be obliged
to settle the question by fighting it out, and leaving the house and
lot as the prize to the victor. Might or craft would then settle the
right. Society and mankind would fall back into a state of war, in
which might is the only rule of right, and which Hobbes contends was
their natural state, out of which they were happy to get by the
surrender of all their natural rights or natural liberty to any one
who would consent to be their king, and in return would maintain them
in a state of peace.
The Paris Commune, endorsed by Mr. Phillips, and which was led on and
approved by the Internationals, tells us not only the principles of
the Association, but its method of carrying them out and reducing them
to practice. We cite here a passage from _The Dublin Review_ on the
principles and spirit of the Commune:
“M. Auguste Desmoulins is one of those fanatical believers in the
infallibility of the unknown, to whom the past is all
superstition, the present all corruption, and the future the one
reality of life. He is inaccessible to conviction either in the
way of holy water or the way of petroleum; and with him, as with
all those of his school, the mind has become so far softened that
the terminology which has hitherto served not merely among
Christians and Jews, but among such heathens as the Greeks and
Romans, the Turks, the Indians, the Red Indians, to distinguish
between right and wrong, has ceased to convey a meaning. The
world is not a mere Babel of tongues nowadays: it is, outside the
church, a far worse Babel of thought. In the following passage,
which really sums up the argument of his paper in a sufficiently
trenchant and complete form, M. Desmoulins does not hesitate to
convey his opinion that the coveting of one’s neighbor’s goods is
suggested by, or at least connected with, a sentiment of justice;
that the daily bread earned by labor is much more keenly enjoyed
by a man who does not believe in God, or heaven, or hell; and
that as neither the French workman nor his master believes in a
future state, it is only natural and quite right that the workman
should heal the difference between them here by robbery:
“‘The Parisian workman is often obliged to visit the
handsome quarters of the town, while new buildings are
ever thrusting him further away beyond the old barriers
into vile habitations. In this condition, which is made
for him. anything helps to irritate him. How can he find
content in a home that is narrow, ill-lighted, foul,
nearly without air, when he compares this wretched hole,
for which he pays so dear, with the sumptuous chambers
that he has either built or decorated in the rich
quarters? It is easy to denounce in eloquent homilies the
spirit of envy that devours the lower classes. We should
recognize that a true notion of justice mixes with the
feeling.
“‘The desire to enjoy the fruits of his labor is
especially likely to spring up in the mind of the French
workman, who does not believe, any more than his master,
in the reparations of a future life; who does not
perceive for the right of the master any other sanction
than the material fact of possession; and whom, besides,
universal suffrage invests with a share of sovereignty
equal to that of the capitalist. Whatever may be said by
those who have been justly called mammonite writers, we
can easily understand that the proletary who has just
given his vote finds it hard to resign himself to social
serfage at the very moment when he feels himself
politically sovereign. This striking contrast between his
rights as citizen and his condition of pariah in society,
accompanies him everywhere, reproduces itself in every
act of his life, and adds a perpetual gloom to exhausting
labor and never-abating privations.’
“This passage contains the essence of M. Desmoulins’ apology for 704
the Commune; and it supplies, we submit, matter for reflection in
its every line. The statesmen and the classes in society who
delight in seeing the influence of religion weakened or
destroyed, never seem to realize until it is too late that they
are sure to be the especial victims of their own success. The
great truths of life hang together and sustain each other:
‘All is contained in each:
Dodona’s forest in an acorn’s cup.’
The man who scorns to love God, how shall he continue to love his
neighbor? The man who has said, ‘There is no God,’ is he not on
the point of also saying, ‘Lust is lawful,’ ‘Property is
robbery’?”
We copy also from the same _Review_ a letter from General Cluseret
from this city to a member of the Society:
“NEW YORK, 17th February.
“MY DEAR VARLIN: I have just received your welcome letter of the
2d. It explains the delay in replying to my application. Need I
say that I accept, and will set to work at once in endeavoring to
be useful to my brethren in poverty and toil? The newspaper which
I told you of is not yet established. I think it better not to
renew my attempts in that direction, considering the late events
in France, and the numerous letters I have received from my
friends, who are unanimous in recalling me to Europe.
“In all probability, I shall be there next summer, but, in the
interval, I shall have arranged international relations between
the different French and American groups, and selected one person
or several persons (at the discretion of the French committee) of
proved zeal and capability, to replace me. As you say, we shall
surely, infallibly triumph if we persist in demanding success
from our organization. But we must remember that the aim of our
Association is to associate (_solidariser_) the greatest number
for action. Let us, then, be liberal; let us round off our
angles; let us be really brethren, not in words, but in deeds;
let not such mere terms as doctrine and individuality separate
those whom common suffering, which means a common interest, has
united: we are all and all, we must acknowledge that; if we are
beaten, it is our own fault. I have not been able to picture our
people to myself during the late troubles. What has been the
attitude of the workmen’s societies, and what are their present
dispositions? Certainly, we must not sacrifice our ideas to
politics, but we must not detach ourselves from them, even
momentarily. In my mind, the meaning of all that is going on is
simply this, that the Orleans are slipping little by little close
to power, and paring his nails for L. N., so that one fine
morning they will merely have to substitute themselves for him.
“Now, we ought to be ready, physically and morally, for that day.
_On that day, we, or nothing_. Until then I shall probably remain
quiet, _but on that day, I affirm_--and you know my ‘Nay’ never
means ‘Yea’--_Paris shall be ours, or Paris shall exist no longer_.
This will be the decisive moment for the accession of the
people.--Yours ever, CLUSERET.
“You are mistaken in believing, for a moment, that I am
neglecting the socialist in favor of the political movement. No;
it is only from a purely socialistic point of view I am pursuing
the revolutionary work; but you must thoroughly know we can do
nothing in the direction of social reform if the old political
system be not annihilated. Let us not forget that at this moment
the Empire exists merely in name, and that government consists in
party abuse. If, under these grave circumstances, the socialist
party permits itself to be lulled to sleep by the abstract theory
of sociological science, _we may wake up one fine morning to find
ourselves under new masters, more dangerous for us than those we
have at present, because they would be younger, and consequently
more vigorous and more powerful_.”
We have personally known General (?) Cluseret, and we know him to be a
man who acts from deliberation, not impulse, who means what he says,
and who can be restrained from going straight to his end by no
religious principle, moral scruple, or sentiment of mercy, pity, or
compassion. His disposition is as stern and inexorable as a physical 705
law of nature. When he threatened to burn Paris rather than surrender
it, he meant it, and he was the man to do it or to see that it was
done if within the limits of the possible. Mr. Phillips seems also to
appear, at least, to threaten incendiarism as a means of accomplishing
his purpose. What means this, the closing sentence of his lecture:
“The lesson taught by Chicago is that wealth cannot afford to neglect
poverty”? Does this mean that the Internationals burnt Chicago? or
does it simply mean that other cities may be burnt as well as Chicago,
and will be, if wealth continues to neglect poverty or refuses to
yield to the demands of the International Association of Workingmen?
This gives the question a startling aspect. Certain it is that the
Association holds itself free to introduce its socialism or communism
by murder, assassination, robbery, plunder, and conflagration at the
pleasure or dictation of its chiefs. Take the following letter, read
and endorsed by Mr. Phillips before a New York audience:
“Before proceeding to speak of it, you will allow me to read a
notice which has been placed in my hand, and in the object of
which I sympathize cordially, because the great foreign movement
can be commemorated by it. The French Commune has always seemed
to me to deserve the cordial respect of every lover of the
progress of the masses throughout the world. I have no doubt that
in due time its good name will be vindicated, and its leaders
lifted to the unqualified respect of the civilized world. The
notice I hold in my hand is as follows:
“‘_To the Workingmen of New York, friends of humanity,
enemies of bloodshed, and lovers of justice_: Citizens!
The recent barbarous executions in France, in cold blood,
six months after all struggles are over, and the ferocity
with which the conquerors pursue their victims, are a
disgrace and shame to humanity. We must not allow the
human race to be stained by the shedding of its own blood
without a protest. You, workingmen, would you let your
friends the workingmen be murdered because they have
defended our rights in any part of the world? No!
certainly not without raising your voice and making it
heard across the ocean. To give effect to these purposes,
a grand funeral procession will take place in New York on
Sunday, the 10th of December, at 1 o’clock, forming
opposite the Cooper Institute. All men, without
distinction of party, of race, of nationality, friends of
justice and freedom, are invited to join. By order of the
Committee of Arrangements of the Federal Council.’
“I hope every man who loves his fellow will show himself there.
There was never nobler blood shed, never more high-minded and
disinterested effort made in the long history of Freedom’s
struggle, than in Paris, when, in defiance of all the oligarchies
of Europe, that city stood up for the individual and for liberty
in the nineteenth century.”
The impudence of the writers of this letter is sublime, and only
surpassed by that of the lecturer in endorsing it. Why, these fellows
would persuade us that they are “enemies of bloodshed and lovers of
justice,” meek as lambs, timid as sheep, and harmless as doves--they
who, without a shadow of justice or excuse, made the streets of Paris
run with the blood of the innocent, the noble, and the saintly.
“Enemies of bloodshed”!--they whose hands are reeking with blood! Yes,
to having their own blood shed, but not to the shedding of the blood
of others. “Enemies of bloodshed and lovers of justice”! Good God! can
hypocrisy or self-delusion go so far? Let the assassination of
Generals Le Comte and Clement Thomas, the horrible murders, when it
was known that the cause of the Commune was lost, of the holy and
unoffending Archbishop of Paris, of Jesuit fathers, and a dozen
Dominican friars and lay brothers, to say nothing of other murders
hardly less horrible, reply to that false pretence. It would seem that
these miscreants count for nothing the blood they shed without
authority, in violation of law, religion, morality, and every
principle of justice, and every sentiment of humanity; it is only when 706
justice overtakes them, and, after trial and conviction by legitimate
authority, orders them and their fellow-criminals to be shot or sends
them to the guillotine in punishment for their crimes, that they have
a horror of bloodshed! Then, and only then, they ring out their
dastard cry against injustice and for the sympathy of that humanity
they have so greatly outraged! The men who have been executed by the
government at Versailles deserved their fate--men without a single
virtue or noble quality except personal bravery in face of death.
Deluded were they? Yes, as every great criminal, murderer, or assassin
is deluded.
What most excites our indignation is to find an educated and refined
American gentleman, of no mean ability and rare eloquence, and past
middle age, coming forward before an American audience to express in a
written lecture deep and unreserved sympathy with, and approval of,
these horrors and abominations, equal to those of ‘93, and applauded
by his auditors for such an outrage on common morality and decency.
Yet it is no more than we might have been prepared for, since Mr.
Phillips only gave a logical expression to the principles he had
always defended as an abolitionist; and while there are fools enough
among us who imagine that the issues of the war have endorsed them and
they have been sanctioned by the God of battles. We love our country,
and have been proud of our countrymen; but, if they have fallen so low
as to applaud the Paris Commune and its horrid butcheries and
profanations, we can only say, Alas for them!
It may have become unsafe to oppose the Internationals, since the
police has taken them under its protection, and granted them their
impudent demands. We are surrounded by Internationals--our city is at
the mercy of men who are restrained by no law, by no religion, by no
morality, by no sentiment of humanity, from using any means or methods
they judge likely to serve their ends, and New York is hardly less
wealthy and more combustible than Paris. Herein is there a grave
danger. At its head are men who are in dead earnest, desperate men,
who shrink from nothing likely to further their ends. We are not
surprised that Prussia and Austria have taken the alarm--consulted
together as to the means of protecting themselves and society against
their machinations. France keeps them in check only by her army, and
knows not how soon even the army may fraternize with them--and
fraternize with them it certainly will if it loses all hope of
restoring the Empire or the monarchy. Great Britain is now using them,
but will soon find herself obliged to suppress them, as she did or as
she attempted to suppress the Thugs in India, if she means to preserve
her institutions. Here they will make trouble, for each party will bid
for their votes, and fear to offend them for fear of losing an
election; but they can acquire less power out of our cities here than
elsewhere, unless they enroll in their ranks the recently emancipated
negroes, and rouse their savage instincts to dispossess the planters
and to take possession of their plantations; for the passion for
individual property is too strong in our agricultural laborers, and
the facilities for individuals to rise from proletaries to
capitalists, or to the ownership of land, are too great to afford
them, when it comes to the test, any appropriate support. Yet they
will confuse our politics, corrupt still more the morals of our
community, and defeat any wise and salutary action of the government.
They will strengthen the burgher class and corporations in towns by 707
compelling many who are not favorable to these classes and interests
to support them, as the only means left of saving society from lapsing
into complete barbarism.
We shall probably return at an early day to this subject, for it is
really the great question of the hour.
[144] 1. _The Dublin Review._ Article IX.: The International
Society. London. October, 1871.
2. _The Labor Movement._ Lecture of Wendell Phillips.
Steinway Hall. _New York Tribune_, Dec. 7, 1871.
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ON CATHOLIC LIBRARIES.
It must be confessed that the Catholics of this country, in
proportion to their numerical strength and untiring zeal for the
interests of religion, do not present that proportionately large
class of readers which we find among the Protestant sects. Their
exertions in building churches, schools, and charitable institutions
have been beyond all praise, and have constantly elicited the
admiration and astonishment of their opponents; but as yet very
little organized effort has been made by the influential portion of
the laity to place within easy reach of their humbler co-religionists
the means of cheap and instructive reading. The more intelligent and
wealthy are too often content to purchase a few standard Catholic
works, and after perusing them with more or less attention place them
with their other books on the shelves of their libraries, there to
remain secluded from public view, and of comparatively little value
to any person but their owners. The less favored class, who for
obvious reasons are unable to indulge in this luxury, are still
practically cut off from one of the chief sources of knowledge and
amusement--good books--and are necessarily compelled from
uncontrollable circumstances to go through life with their minds and
tastes undeveloped, and their time dissipated in idleness, or wasted
over the trashy and deleterious contents of the many cheap story
newspapers and novels which the American press is constantly
scattering broadcast over the land.
This melancholy fact is most observable in the ranks of our adult
immigrant population, who, coming from countries where education was
almost unattainable, money scarce, and books dear, have not generally
acquired either ability or taste for reading, though it has been
remarked that even among them, when an opportunity is at all
presented, the desire for information is excited in a remarkable
degree, and only requires a reasonable impetus to develop it still
more. Still, from the fact of their usually limited means and
comparatively unsettled modes of life, they are as yet unable to
purchase or retain any appreciable collection of desirable
publications.
The remedy for this defect in our growing Catholic society lies, in
our opinion, in the formation of local libraries, suitable in variety
and extent to the wants and capacity of particular localities. There
are at least twenty-five hundred centres of Catholic population in
America where very respectable collections of books could be purchased
and placed in some safe and accessible place, say in the school-rooms
or church basements, and half as many more, particularly in our
Western settlements, where at least a few good books would be of great 708
advantage to the hardy tillers of the soil, and where, even if there
be no public place to deposit them, there is always some prominent
settler who would willingly assume the honorary office of librarian.
Experiments of both plans have been tried in many of our large city
parishes, and in a few isolated instances in the country, with marked
success.
The advantages of libraries conducted on this system are numerous, and
ought to be apparent to every one, not the least of which would be
_cheapness_. Let us suppose, for instance, that, in any given locality,
fifty persons would each subscribe two dollars. This would create a
capital of one hundred dollars, or sufficient to purchase, on an
average, one hundred and fifty volumes, great and small, of readable
books, from any of our large publishing-houses in Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, or Baltimore. Thus, for two dollars, a subscriber would
have, for reading or reference, the practical ownership of works at
least fifty times the value of his contribution, and, by charging new
members a small fee for the use of each volume, a fund might be
created to purchase new books as they appeared from time to time. In
this manner, and with proper attention, a library of dimension
commensurate with the growing wants of the neighborhood would be
brought into existence without much expense to any particular class of
the community.