France and the Republic / A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces During the 'Centennial' Year 1889

by William Henry Hurlbert

On the face of things it appears to me that the existence of this University is somewhat inconsistent with the notion that 'the religious sentiment is dead in France.' The classes are now attended by between four and five hundred students, for whose accommodation three 'family houses' have been already built, in which students are lodged at an expense of from 1,000 to 1,400 fr. a year, and when the academic buildings now in process of construction are completed, more than a thousand students can be thus lodged. Two dispensaries, a Maternity Hospital, under the charge of Sisters of Charity of St.-Vincent de Paul, together with the large Hospital de la Charité, are directly connected with the clinical service of the medical faculty, and are so administered as to render the most important services to the industrious population of the city. The Electrical Department of the Faculty of Sciences is particularly well equipped, and one of the assistants in charge of this department, who showed us some improvements recently devised here in the working apparatus, surprised me by the extent and minute accuracy of his information as to all the most recent progress made in the applications of electricity to machinery, and to the arts on both sides of the Atlantic.

I was not surprised, however, to learn from M. Arthaut that the astonishing prosperity of this great institution is viewed with extreme dissatisfaction by the authorities at Paris, and particularly by the University of France, which has been confirmed again under the Third Republic in the monopoly of academic privileges, of which it was very sensibly deprived by the Assembly under the Government of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta. By way of expressing this dissatisfaction with dignity and emphasis, the Government of the Third Republic actually forbids free Catholic universities to use the title of universities. M. Ferry's Article 7 not being yet law in this best of all possible French Republics, Catholics cannot be prevented from spending their own money in founding institutions which are really universities. But, at all events, they can be forbidden to give any one of them the title of a university, that being reserved for the State establishment, which, from Paris, extends its academic sway all over France.

I called the attention of M. Arthaut to the fact that a great Catholic University has been this year founded in the capital of the Republic of the United States, and that the President of the Republic, himself a Protestant, not only attended the ceremonies of the foundation, but made a brief speech, in which he expressed his best wishes for its progress and prosperity. 'That, I am afraid,' said M. Arthaut, 'is a kind of republic which we are not likely to see established in France.'

To measure the significance of this Catholic work in behalf of liberty and religion here at Lille, it must be borne in mind that the very men who are building it up with such splendid liberality and enterprise are compelled by the iniquitous laws of the Third Republic to bear their own share as taxpayers in supporting here at Lille another academic institution of a similar scope, but of less importance, under the direct control of the University of France, from all share in the administration of which religion and the ministers of religion are as rigidly excluded as that refugee of the First French Revolution, Stephen Girard, intended they should be from the college which he founded at Philadelphia. Of course the same thing is true of the Catholics all over France. Out of their pockets must come nine-tenths of the enormous sum, as yet quite incalculable, but certainly running far up in the hundreds of millions of francs which is still to be expended by the Third Republic upon its 'scholastic palace,' and the ever-increasing army of 'lay teachers,' male and female, whom it is yearly turning out of the educational institutions of France to seek the employment which a vast majority of them cannot possibly hope to find in the public schools, the lyceums and 'faculties' of the nation.

On this point a Councillor-General whom I met here at Lille dwelt with very grave emphasis. 'We are educating here in France,' he said to me, 'hundreds of young men and young women every year under false pretences to enter a profession already overcrowded. For every post which now exists or which can be created within the next ten years in the educational system of these revolutionists at Paris, we are turning out at least a hundred applicants each year of each sex, who must necessarily be thrown upon the public. What will become of them? The young men will go into Nihilism, as young men of the same sort do in Russia; the young women will go upon the street. Only the other day at Paris, the Government advertised a competition for about 70 positions in the telegraphic service. How many young women applied? More than 800! What is to become of the 730 unsuccessful competitors? And what right has the State to flood the market thus, in advance of the necessities of the country, and at the cost of the taxpayers, with male and female teachers, any more than with carpenters, or with surgeons, or with confectioners?'

One circumstance connected with the development of this great Catholic University at Lille (as an American I permit myself to give the institution its proper title) is of special significance. It is not the only institution of the kind which has been called into existence in France since the Third Republic began its war against religion in 1880. There is a Free Catholic institution at Lyons, which consists of three faculties under the administration of a company founded to receive and administer all sums given or bequeathed to organise the institutes. The Archbishop of Lyons is Chancellor of this institution, which has a dean and seven professors of theology, a dean and eighteen professors of law, with a secretary and librarian of that faculty, a dean and seven professors of letters, a dean and nine professors of science. There are similar institutions also at Angers and at Toulouse. All of these are freely supported by the private subscriptions of Catholic France, as is also the great Catholic Institute of Paris in the Rue Vaugirard, so admirably conducted by Monseigneur d'Hulst, the Vicar-General of Paris. Thanks to the law of July 12, 1875, and to the stand made by the friends of liberty and religion when the law of March 18, 1880, was finally enacted, the students of the Faculty of Law in these Catholic institutes still have the right to present themselves with the certificates of their several institutes at the public examinations for the diplomas of the baccalaureate, the licentiate and the doctorate in law, and for the certificate of capacity in the law, necessary to enable the successful candidates to practise the legal profession in France. To maintain the efficiency of the free Catholic institutions, the Catholics of France have spared during the last few years neither labour nor money. More than 17,000,000 francs have been contributed during that period to establish the Catholic educational system in Paris alone, and more than 2,000,000 francs are yearly subscribed there to keep it up. As I have already said, the University here at Lille represents an expenditure during the same period of more than 11,000,000 francs and a still larger prospective expenditure.

It would be interesting, if it were possible, to learn how much out of their own pockets the propagandists of unbelief have expended during this same decade upon the irreligious education of the children of their countrymen! Were the truth attainable, the amount expended by them would be found to bear to the amount received by them from their propaganda of unbelief much less than the proportion of Falstaff's 'pennyworth of bread' to his 'intolerable deal of sack!' While the Catholics of France have been giving millions to defend the right of the French people to protect the faith of their children, these men have been expending hundreds of millions of the money of Catholic taxpayers upon school buildings, the contracts for erecting which have been controlled by themselves for their friends; they have been finding places in the public educational service for their friends, dependants and allies, and they have been comfortably drawing large salaries themselves from the Treasury.

Set over against these incontrovertible facts, the fact, as incontrovertible, for which I am indebted here to M. Grimbert, that of the millions expended in defence of liberty and religion here at Lille, a very large proportion has been contributed by one single Catholic citizen of this ancient Flemish city, who has consecrated his life and his fortune to his faith in the spirit of the earliest Christian times, and I think my readers will agree with me, not only that the religious sentiment is not dead in France, but that it never was more living and more active in France, nor more full of promise for the social and political regeneration of this great people.

I shall not run the risk of offending this good Catholic by naming him, though his name and his work are an open secret for every intelligent person in Lille. Suffice it that, coming of an old Flemish stock and bearing an old Flemish name, this citizen (the title of citizen means something respectable in these staunch old free cities) of Lille years ago insisted to his brother, who was his associate in the ownership and management of one of the largest commercial houses of this region, that they should take regularly into the partnership account of their business, for one-third of their annual profits, 'the work of God.' This was done; and from that day to this the proportion thus set apart of their profits has been regularly devoted to the service of the Church and of charity. But this is not all. The brother, of whom I speak with the reticence and the reverence due to a type of character not absolutely common in this age of the Golden Calf, has systematically limited his own personal expenses during the whole of these years to a few thousands of francs, devoting all the rest of his income to religious and benevolent objects.

I should really like to see a calm business-like estimate made of the economical advantages likely to result to a country from extinguishing at an expense of several hundreds of millions of francs a year the faith which gives birth to characters such as this.