Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays

by Julia Ward Howe

French history in modern times is largely the history of Paris. The modern saying has been that Paris was France. But we shall say: It is not. Had Paris given a truer representation to France, she might have avoided many long agonies and acute crises.

It is because Paris has forced her representation upon France that Absolutism and Intelligence, the two deadly foes, have fought out their fiercest battles on the genial soil which seems never to have been allowed to bear its noblest fruits. The tendency to centralization, with which the French have been so justly reproached, may or may not be inveterate in them as a people. If it is so, the tendency of modern times, which is mostly in the contrary direction, would lessen the social and political importance of France as surely, if not as swiftly, as Bismarck's mulcting and mutilation.

The organizations which result from centralization are naturally despotic and, in so far, demoralizing. Individuals, having no recognized representation, and being debarred the natural resource of legitimate association, show their devotion to progress and their zeal for improvement either in passionate and melancholy appeals or in secret manœuvrings. The tendency of these methods is to chronic fear on the one hand and disaffection on the other, and to deep conspiracies and sudden seditions which astonish the world, but which have in them nothing astonishing for the student of human nature.

So those who love France should implore her to lay aside her quick susceptibilities and irritable enthusiasms, and to study out the secret of her own shortcomings. How is it that one of the most intelligent nations of the world was, twenty years ago, one of the least instructed? How is it that a warm-blooded, affectionate race generates such atrocious social heartlessness? How was it that the nation which was the apostle of freedom in 1848 kept Rome for twenty years in bondage? How is it that the Jesuit, after long exile, has been reenstalled in its midst with prestige and power? How is it, in so brilliant and liberal a society, that the successors of Henri IV. and Sully are yet to be found?

Perhaps the reason for some of these things lay in the treason of this same Henri IV. He was a Protestant at heart, and put on the Catholic cloak in order to wear the crown. "The kingdom of France," said he, or one of his admirers, "is well worth hearing a mass or two." "The kingdom of the world," said Christ, "is a small thing for a man to gain in exchange for the kingdom of his own honest soul." Henri IV. made this bad bargain for himself and for France. He did it, doubtless, in view of the good his reign might bring to the distracted country. But he had better have given her the example, sole and illustrious, of the most brilliant man of the time putting by its most brilliant temptation, and taking his seat low on the ground with those whose hard-earned glory it is to perish for conscience's sake.

But the great King is dead, long since, and his true legacy—his wonderful scheme of European liberation and pacification—has only been represented by a little newspaper, edited in Paris, but published in Geneva, and called The United States of Europe.

So our word to France is: Try to solve the problem of modern Europe with the great word which Henri IV. said, in a whisper, to his other self, the minister Sully. Learn that social forces are balanced first by being allowed to exist. Mutilation is useless in a world in which God continues to be the Creator. Every babe that he sends into the world brings with it a protest against absolutism. The babe, the nation, may be robbed of its birthright; but God sends the protest still. And France did terrible wrong to the protest of her own humanity when she suffered her Protestant right hand to be cut off, and a great part of her most valuable population to submit to the alternative of exile or apostasy.

So mad an act as this does not stand on the record of modern times. The apostate has no spiritual country; the exile has no geographical country. The men who are faithful to their religious convictions are faithful to their patriotic duties. What a premium was set upon falsehood, what a price upon faith, when all who held the supremacy of conscience a higher fact than the supremacy of Rome were told to renounce this confession or to depart!

If Paris gives to our mind some of the most brilliant pictures imaginable, she also gives us some of the most dismal. While her drawing-rooms were light and elegant, her streets were dark and wicked. Among her hungry and ignorant populace, Crime planted its bitter seeds and ripened its bloody crop. Police annals show us that Eugène Sue has not exaggerated the truth in his portraits of the vicious population of the great city. London has its hideous dens of vice, but Paris has, too, its wicked institutions.

Its greatest offences, upon which I can only touch, regard the relations between men and women. Its police regulations bearing upon this point are dishonoring to any Christian community. Its social tone in this respect is scarcely better. Men who have the dress and appearance of gentlemen will show great insolence to a lady who dares to walk alone, however modestly. Marriage is still a matter of bargain and interest, and the modes of conduct which set its obligations at naught are more open and recognized here than elsewhere. The city would seem, indeed, to be the great market for that host of elegant rebels against virtue who are willing to be admired without being respected, and who, with splendid clothes and poor and mean characteristics, are technically called the demi-monde, the half-world of Paris.