[46] An essential difference between France and England. “No one,” says Professor Dicey, “can maintain that the law of England recognises anything like that natural right to the free communication of thoughts and opinions which was proclaimed in France nearly a hundred years ago to be one of the most valuable rights of man.”—The Law of the Constitution, first edition, pp. 257, 258.
Law about Associations not Obsolete.
The ordinary law about associations was declared by some English journals to be “obsolete,” and revived only for persecution. It was so little obsolete that it was steadily applied to lay associations. I was at one time an honorary member of a French club limited to eighteen in order that an “authorisation” might not be required; and I have been vice-president of another club, not limited in numbers, so that we had to send our statutes to be approved by the prefect, and whenever the slightest change was made in them they had to be submitted again to the same authority. It was a very simple formality, costing three sous for a postage stamp. Had we acted like the unauthorised religious orders, which declined to submit to this not very terrible piece of tyranny, we should have been dissolved as they were, and turned out of our club-house as they were turned out of their establishments.
[48] Author of L’Irréligion de l’Avenir, Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, Les Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine, La Morale d’Epicure et ses Rapports avec les Doctrines Contemporaines, etc. Guyau died in 1888 at the age of thirty-three.
[49] The reverend father is speaking of Her Majesty’s visit to the Grande Chartreuse, which she was able to make by taking advantage of an ancient rule made before the Church could foresee the monstrous anomaly of an heretical king or queen. By that rule, which still remains in force, a bishop or a reigning sovereign can visit a house of cloistered monks or nuns. The Archbishop of Canterbury could, however, scarcely get into a nunnery, as the Rev. Father du Lac informs us that the ancient English sees were erased by Pius IX. from the list of the bishoprics of Christendom.
[50] In the number for 23d July 1887.
[51] A Natural History Society was founded in Autun (a small old town in Burgundy) two or three years ago. It now includes more than four hundred members. Their principal pleasure is to take long walks in the neighbourhood for geological and botanical purposes. They have meetings, lectures, and a museum. Anything more moral or more healthy it is impossible to imagine.
[52] There have been years in the memory of living men when anybody who would take two barrels to a wine-grower might carry away one of them full of wine (the wine being worth less than the wood); and when for the payment of one sou a man might drink wine as if it were water.
[53] An interesting example of English improvidence came to my knowledge recently. A professional man of great talent, who had been eminently successful, died, leaving a widow and a large family of children. At the time of his death the children were all married. The widow was left without a penny, and was anxious to find a situation, because the married children all living up to the extreme limit of their incomes, as their father had done, were unable to subscribe an annuity. In France they would probably all have had savings, and, with the national love of the mother and sense of filial duty, would have cheerfully hastened to provide for her old age.