Part 27 (1/2)
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 t.i.tle of citizen means something respectable in these staunch old free cities) of Lille years ago insisted to his brother, who was his a.s.sociate in the owners.h.i.+p and management of one of the largest commercial houses of this region, that they should take regularly into the partners.h.i.+p account of their business, for one-third of their annual profits, 'the work of G.o.d.' 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 extinguis.h.i.+ng at an expense of several hundreds of millions of francs a year the faith which gives birth to characters such as this.
I visited, in one of the suburbs of Lille, the extensive manufactories of another well-known house, the heads of which have worked out and established an excellent system of 'mutual a.s.sistance' among their employees, and built up a large and well-ordered _cite ouvriere_ on a plan substantially resembling that of those which I saw at St.-Gobain and at Anzin. A house for young girls established by this firm, very near their main factory, struck me as particularly admirable. It is under the management of the Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul, who fill the place with a pervading spirit of cheerfulness and animation, quite indescribable. The dormitories were the perfection of neatness. The gymnastic hall and the grounds were in apple-pie order, and as the lower part of the large and airy building erected by the firm for this domicile is used during the day as a kind of creche by the married women who leave their young children here while they are busy in the factory, the whole place was alive with merry and laughing little imps. I heard of other establishments of the same kind at and near Roubaix on a still larger scale. These I unfortunately had not time to visit. Under the Empire in 1865 a few energetic citizens of Lille induced the munic.i.p.ality to guarantee five per cent, interest on a capital of 2,000,000 francs for the establishment of a company to construct, let and sell houses for working-men under certain conditions as to the isolation of each house and as to its proper ventilation and drainage.
The rental of these houses can never exceed eight per cent, on the cost of erection, those of one story never to cost more than 2,400 francs, and those of two stories more than 3,000 francs, including the cost of the land. The houses are built of brick with foundations and sills of Soignies stone. These were the original statutes, but the company is now allowed to build single-story houses on a larger scale with cellars, which may be rented for 400 francs a year or bought for 5,000 francs--a first payment in the case of purchase to be made of 500 francs, and after that the money to be paid in instalments of 40 francs a month over thirteen years. All the wells and pumps are supplied by the munic.i.p.ality.
The munic.i.p.ality also makes an annual grant in aid of a very useful charity, founded under the Empire, and largely developed by private gifts and legacies, called the 'Invalids of Labour.' This now secures pensions to nearly a hundred workmen, disabled by serious accidents incurred in their labour or through some effort to help others in peril.
It also gives temporary a.s.sistance in less severe cases. But the most characteristic inst.i.tution which I found flouris.h.i.+ng at Lille has a history worth telling. It strikingly ill.u.s.trates the development under the old _regime_ in France and Flanders of those public works of benevolence of which we are so often and so audaciously asked to believe that they had no existence before the benign 'principles of 1789'
bedewed the hearts of men, and it not less strikingly ill.u.s.trates the demoralising and destructive influence upon all manner of sound and useful establishments throughout France of the headlong and reckless administration of public affairs by the successive 'governments' of the First Republic.
In the year 1607, on September 27, a worthy Catholic citizen, Bartholomew Masurel, _bourgeois et manant_ of the city of Lille, came before two notaries, and declared 'that to succour the poor people of Lille in their necessities, and also for the salvation of his own soul and the souls of his predecessors and successors, he wished to establish a _Mont-de-Piete_, where money loans should be made without usury or interest, and not as they were made by the Lombards.'
To this end Bartholomew Masurel gave, by a donation between living persons, and irrevocable, to take effect after his death, all his lands, fiefs, and houses which he owned at Lille, and in his country place, and the value of which might be estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand _livres parisis_, or in money of our day nominally 300,000 francs. In fact, the gift, I am told, represented about half a million francs of our days.
But the good '_bourgeois et manant_' could not hold out till his death against the appeal which the sight of 'the poor people of Lille in their necessities' daily made to his kindly heart. So in 1609 he agreed with the Mayor, that he would turn over all these possessions at once to the magistrates to be applied to the purpose he meant to effect, the magistrates agreeing to secure to him an annuity out of the funds of the city of 1,200 florins, or about 1,562 francs of our time. Thereupon he went to work with the authorities to found his charity. From his statutes we learn that foundations of this kind were then common in French Flanders. He models them, as he says, upon 'those of similar foundations in our neighbouring towns and elsewhere.'
No loans were to be made except to '_manants et habitants de la Ville Taille et Banlieue de Lille_,' and only to 'poor and necessitous persons who, not being able to gain their livelihood, were forced to borrow money;' nor were loans to be made to 'persons prodigal, of evil life, and accustomed to squander their goods.' For this due order was to be taken by the magistrates. At first the loans were limited to 24 florins (30 francs) to one person; the lowest sum loaned being 20 patars, or 1 fr. 25 c. of our times. So well had Bartholomew Masurel organised his charity, and so many good Christian souls swelled its funds by gifts and bequests, that within a year the maximum loan was raised to 50 florins, in 1669 to 100 florins, and in 1745 it was fixed at 120 florins, or 150 francs. At this figure it stood when the First Republic began its experiments. The fund was then known as 'the true Mont-de-Piete,' and was carried on under letters patent granted in 1609 by the Archduke Albert of Austria. When Lille became French in 1667, Louis XIV had to recognise and confirm all the rights and t.i.tles of this benevolent inst.i.tution.
It had rendered great service to the industries of Lille during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of the funds enabling the managers to lend sums to weavers on their goods when trade fell off, and so relieving them from the necessity of parting with them for less than their value. Just before the Revolution the Masurel Fund amounted to 455,454 francs, of which 256,627 francs were in cash or in loans, and the rest in state funds and houses, yielding a revenue of 8,307 francs.
On January 23, 1794, the National Convention coolly ordered that all 'objects of necessity deposited in any Mont-de-Piete for an amount not exceeding 20 francs should be at once restored without payment to their owners, and all such objects deposited for amounts below 50 and above 20 francs on payment, without interest, of the amount beyond 20 francs!'
This 'liberal' legislation had been preceded on August 24, 1793, by another act of spoliation which ordered 'the payment of the capital of all sums at interest to be made in _a.s.signats_, and the conversion of all the debts of the Communes, and of the suppressed public organisations throughout France into State debts.
In consequence of these measures the whole property of the Masurel fund was found in 1803, when Napoleon began to overhaul the chaos to which the lunatics and plunderers of the Republic had reduced France, to amount to no more than 10,408 francs in real estate. This was the way in which the 'principles of 1789' developed the benevolent inst.i.tutions of France, and introduced a new era!
The authorities of Lille had the good sense and forecast thereupon to suspend the operations of the true _Mont-de-Piete_, and to set about restoring the fund as far and as fast as was possible. The Christian inst.i.tution of Masurel had fared better than the 'Lombards.' This latter establishment had to be formally closed in 1796, as it was then found to have no more than 86,000 francs in its treasury, and this in _a.s.signats_!
In 1857 the Prefect of the Nord reported that the Masurel fund might be safely devoted anew to the purposes of its founder. It then amounted to 249,644 fr. By an imperial decree of 1860, all that remained of the property of the 'Lombards' was amalgamated with the Masurel fund, and the inst.i.tution was put under the direction of the official Mont-de-Piete of Lille, but with a separate system of accounts, and began its operations again on the lines laid down by its founder in 1607. It has since worked so well that the maximum of the loans reimbursable, without interest, has risen from 30 francs in 1860 to 200 francs.
In 1869, the maximum being 100 francs, the number of engagements and renewals was 10,933--the money loaned amounted to 75,460 fr. 50 c., in loans averaging 9fr. 14 c., and the capital of the fund to 257,231 fr.
27 c. In 1888, the maximum being 200 fr., there were 16,000 engagements and renewals, the loans amounted to 136,663 francs in average loans of 8 fr. 54 c., and the capital of the fund to 334,726 fr. 57 c.
Of the 'similar foundations in other towns' which moved the pious emulation of Bartholomew Masurel nearly three centuries ago, how many, I wonder, still exist!
And with them how many other monuments of the Christian civilisation of Flanders and of France were 'improved' off the face of the earth by the 'regenerators' of 1792?
It was not by accident that I learned of the Masurel Mont-de-Piete; but when I went to the Munic.i.p.al Secretary to ask him for some official account of its condition and its operation, that courteous functionary looked at me for a moment with astonishment and then said, 'I am delighted to give you what you want, and I a.s.sure you that, with one exception, you are the only foreigner who has ever asked for this information in the last seven years! The other was the English Protestant clergyman here in Lille, who happens to live or has his chapel, I am not sure which, just opposite the Mont-de-Piete!'
I ought not to speak however of the Masurel foundation as 'unique.' I hope there may be many more men like the good Bartholomew Masurel in our time, and in other countries besides France, than we wot of. But the only modern inst.i.tution of a kindred spirit with this of which I have any present cognisance began its career in England only fifteen years ago, and was founded curiously enough like the Masurel fund by men of the Low Countries. This is the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' of the Netherlands Benevolent Society of London. At a dinner given at the Cannon Street Hotel on May 12, 1874, to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the accession of King William III under the presidency of the Dutch Minister in England, the Count de Bylandt, the guests in a glow of loyalty and good-fellows.h.i.+p proposed to raise a contribution to be spent in the purchase of some handsome memorial of the occasion. A happy inspiration came to the Chairman, and he suggested to his countrymen that the best of all possible memorials of such an occasion would be to establish a fund for the relief of poor and worthy Netherlanders in London and to give it the name of their King. The suggestion was adopted by acclamation, and the result the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' from which, as I find by examining its statutes and its records, gratuitous loans, precisely identical in their object and under conditions not essentially different, are made to deserving Hollanders in London.
The 'fonds' is connected with a society doing the usual work of all such foreign benevolent societies in London. But it is a special fund, and as I learn from the Annual Report of the Society for January 1889, it has so far been administered with entire success, and with the result of enabling not a few honest and industrious Hollanders stranded in London to make a fair and prosperous start in life. That the fund is administered in the true practical spirit of the old Low Country benevolence, and its advantages appreciated as they ought to be, appears from the statement made by the Treasurer, Mr. Maas, in the Report for 1889, that the number of loans is increasing and the number of donations decreasing. In 1888 371_l._ were loaned as against 185_l._ in 1887, and 247_l._ given away as against 382_l._ in 1887. I observe, too, that the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Polydore de Keyser, gave at this annual meeting as his reason for joining the society which administers this fund that it had the courage to spend 251_l._ in excess of its a.s.sured income rather than send away the good which came to its door to be done.
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE MARNE
REIMS