nobody to protect it. Property is much respected in France; and in bringing up children, this fidelity towards the property of others seems much more carefully inculcated by parents in the lowest class, in the home education of their children, than with us. This respect for the property is closely connected with that respect for the feelings of our neighbors, which constitutes what is called good manners. This is carefully inculcated on children of all ranks in France. They are taught to do what is pleasing and agreeable to others. We are too apt to undervalue this spirit, as tending merely to superficial accomplishments, to empty compliment in words, and unmeaning appearance in acts. But, in reality, this reference to the feelings of others in all we do is a moral habit of great value, where it is generally diffused, and enters into the home training of every family. It is an education both of the parent and child in morals, carried on through the medium of external manners. Our lower and middle classes are deficient in this kind of family education. . It is a fine distinction of the French national character, and social economy, that practical morality is more generally taught through manners, among and by the people themselves, than in any country in Europe. One or two striking instances of this general respect for property have occurred to me in traveling in France. I once forgot my umbrella in a diligence going to Bordeaux, in which I traveled as far as Tours. My umbrella went on to Bordeaux and returned to Tours in the corner of the coach, without being appropriated by any of the numerous passengers, or work people, who must have passed through it on so long a journey, and had this stray unowned article before them. I once traveled from Paris to Boulogne with a gentleman who had come up the same road a few days before. We were conversing on this very subject, the honesty of the people in general, and he recollected having left, on the table of one of the inns, half a basket of grapes, worth about twelve sous, which, he said, he was sure he would find safe. On arriving, he asked the waiter if he had seen the grapes, and they were instantly produced, as a matter of course, out of a press in which they had been carefully put away as property not belonging to the house."' These little incidents speak volumes for the honesty of the French people. We venture to say, that if an umbrella were lost in a stage coach in England, the United States, or any Protestant country of Europe, the owner would never even think of its recovery. In those countries, these and similar articles are but too often regarded as common property, to be appropriated by the finder. Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium present another very fair field of comparison between the relative social comforts and prosperity of the Protestant and Catholic populations in Europe. The two little kingdoms are immediately adjoining each other; and until the tyranny and intolerance of the Dutch government drove the Belgians into a revolution in 1830, they had formed but one kingdom, ever since the settlement of Europe by the allied powers, at the congress of Vienna in 1815. Now what is the relative condition of these two people? There is no comparison between them. In industry, in enterprise, in manufactures, in agriculture, in enlightenment, and in political liberty, the Catholic Belgians are immeasurably ahead of the Protestant Dutch. All Belgium is 1 Pages 79, 80 cultivated as a garden; it is filled, like France, with small landed proprietors, whose industry fully brings out the resources of the soil, and fills the country with abundance. It is, in proportion to the territory, the most populous, as well as the most prosperous country in Europe. It is certainly the freest and the most tolerant monarchy in the world. - In one thing only can Holland claim the precedency over Belgium – in commerce; but even in this respect, Holland has greatly declined of late, notwithstanding the great advantages of her position : 66 In the deserted streets of Delft, and Leyden, and Haarlem," says Mr. Laing, "the grass is growing through the seams of the brick pavements; the ragged petticoat flutters in the wind out of the drawing-room casements of a palace; the echo of wooden shoes, clattering through empty saloons, tells of past magnificence of actual indigence."" Even during the period of her greatest commercial prosperity, when her honest burghers suddenly became purse-proud millionaires, and her fleets contended with those of England for the ascendency on the high seas, the mass of her population derived but little benefit from the overgrown fortunes of the few lucky adventurers: "How little the mass of the people of the Seven United Provinces, the boors or peasants, or even the burgesses of the middle and lower classes, had been acted upon by the wealth and prosperity of the commercial class in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, may be seen in their dwellings, furniture, clothing, and enjoyments, and habits of civilized life. These are all of the make, material, and age, prior to the rise of the power and opulence of Holland - of the age of Queen Elizabeth—and have remained, unchanged and unimproved, until that power and opulence have fallen again to the level from which they rose. A commercial class, an aristocracy of capitalists, numerous perhaps as a moneyed body, but nothing as a national mass, were alone acted upon by this commercial prosperity; and when trade gradually removed to other countries, the Dutch capitalist, without changing his domicil, easily transferred his capital to where the use of it was wanted and profitable. Holland remains a country full of capitalists and paupers; her wealth giving little employment, comparatively, to her own population in productive industry, and adding little to their prosperity, well-being, and habits of activity in producing and enjoying the objects of civilized life."2 Belgium was the first country on the continent of Europe to engage actively in the building of railroads; and at present her whole territory is covered with a net-work of these valuable improvements, affording the greatest facilities for travel and the transport of merchandise. No one has visited that country, who has not been struck by the perfect system under which her railroads are organized. Holland, on the contrary, after a lapse of nearly twenty years, has scarcely yet begun to build railroads. While Belgium has the best railroads, the briskest manufactures, and the most free and thriving population on the continent of Europe, Holland has little to depend on but her commerce, and this resource has now well nigh failed her. The poor abound in every district, and their condition is indeed deplorable in the extreme. Even the charitable institutions devised 1 Page 40. 2 Page 43 for their relief are, like most other institutions of the kind in Protestant countries, little better than state prisons, or else they are agricultura colonies in barren places beyond the Zuyder Zee, in which paupers are compelled to labor, like English convicts sent out to Botany bay.' Mr. Laing gives the following appreciation of the Dutch character as compared with the English : "The Dutch people, eminently charitable and benevolent as a public, their country full of beneficent institutions admirably conducted and munificently supported, are, as individuals, somewhat rough, hard, and, although it be uncharitable to say so, uncharitable and unfeeling. We have, too, at home, our excellent benevolent men, who will subscribe their sovereign, or their twenty, to an hospital, house of refuge, or missionary or charitable society for the relief or instruction of the poor; but, on principle, withhold their penny from the shivering female on their door-steps, imploring alms for the pale, sickly infant in her arms. They are right on principle and consideration, quite right; but one is not particularly in love with such quite-right people. The instinct of benevolence in the heart is worth a whole theory of such political economy in the head."2 We may here remark, in general, that there is much more real charity exhibited towards the poor in Catholic than in Protestant countries. In the former, besides individual alms cheerfully and unostentatiously bestowed, there are splendid public charities richly endowed in all the great cities, where everything is provided for the comfort and consolation of the destitute of all classes. These charities are not mere state establishments, supported by a burdensome taxation, and served by state hirelings at so much a day, as are the "admirably conducted and munificently supported" charitable institutions of Holland, and of all other Protestant countries with which we are acquainted; but they are often the creations of a real Christian charity in individuals, who bestow freely and abundantly of their wealth for this noble purpose; and they are not served by mercenaries, who seem disposed to do just as little as is compatible with retaining their situation and drawing their stated salary, but by men and women, who act from religious motives, and freely and cheerfully do whatever is in their power for the relief of suffering humanity; and all this for the love of God, whose special favorites the poor are considered to be by the Catholic Church. Whoever will take the trouble fully and impartially to examine the history and character of Protestant and Catholic charities, cannot fail to notice these characteristic traits in both, and to mark the vast superiority of the latter over the former, in all the particulars above indicated. Exceptions there may be, but the general rule is as we have stated it. There seems to be this remarkable difference between the condition of the poor in Catholic and in Protestant countries; that, whereas, in the latter, they are viewed by the law, and too often by the people themselves, as state criminals, and are treated accordingly; in the former, they are regarded as objects of compassion, and are almost always accosted with 1 For a description of these colonies, see Laing, p. 48, seqq. 2 Page 46 kindness, and treated with tenderness. Vagrant, vagabond-no epithet is too strong for the English or even American beggar. Is not this but too often the case amongst ourselves? And yet, are our Protestant brethren generally uncharitable? We do not say so. The fault is more that of society than of individuals; more that of their religion than of any natural hard-heartedness in its professors. Protestantism, we repeat it, necessarily fosters a spirit of isolation, of individualism, of selfishness, of pride; and it was only Protestantism that could have made generally current the popular maxim: "Every man for himself, and God for us all!" In Catholic countries, the social feeling is much stronger, and such a maxim would grate harshly on the popular ear; its general acceptance would be impossible. Mr. Laing not only asserts, but proves, that the Catholic population of Prussia is more industrious, enterprising, and wealthy, as well as more free and enlightened on their rights and wants, than the Protestant population of the same kingdom. He also shows that this superiority is fairly traceable, not only to their position on the Rhine and in the vicinity of France or Poland, but also to their principles as Catholics, exempting them from the iron religious supremacy of the Prussian monarch, and placing their spiritual rights under the special guardianship of the Roman Pontiff.' He says: "Her Rhenish and Westphalian provinces are not only wealthy and manufacturing; they are liberal, and hang very loosely to the autocratic principle of the Prussian government. They retained, when they were handed over to Prussia, their former laws and law courts. and have nothing in their laws or courts in common with the rest of Prussia; suffered no revival or intrusion of the old feudal or the Prussian jurisprudence and tribunals, and have very clearly indicated that they would not suffer it. They have shown, in their support of the Catholic bishop of Cologne arising evidently not from a blind spirit of fanaticism, but from a spirit of opposition to despotic sway that they are not a population to be governed, like military serfs, by the will or caprice of a cabinet. It is from this population of about 4,000,000 that the impulse has been given to the great movement of the German people in the German league."? "This population living under French law, is the very kernel of the Prussian kingdom -a concentrated population of from three to four millions, the most wealthy, commercial and manufacturing, and the most enlightened upon their rights and wants, of any, perhaps, in Germany. In the province of Posen, again, at the other extremity of the kingdom, the French administration, by justices de paix and by open courts of justice, and open examination of witnesses, prevails over the general Prussian administration.” 3 That the Prussian Catholics were disposed to range themselves on the side of popular freedom, in consequence of their principles as Catholics, is avowed and proved in the following remarkable passage: "The principle that the civil government, or state, or church and state united, of a country is entitled to regulate its religious belief, has more of 1 Pp. 155, and 230-32 2 Laing, p. 155. 3 Laing, pp. 230-31 intellectual thraldom in it than the power of the popish (?) church ever exercised in the darkest ages; for it had no civil power joined to its religious power. It only worked through the civil power of each country. The church of Rome was an independent, distinct, and often an opposing power in every country to the civil power; A CIRCUMSTANCE IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, TO WHICH, PERHAPS, EUROPE IS INDEBTED FOR HER CIVILIZATION AND FREEDOM-for not being in the state of barbarism and slavery of the east, and of every country, ancient and modern, in which the civil and religious power have been united in one government. Civil liberty is closely connected with religious liberty — with the church being independent of the state. . . In Germany the seven Catholic sovereigns have 12,074,700 Catholic subjects, and 2,541,000 Protestant subjects. The twenty-nine Protestant sovereigns, including the four free cities, have 12,113,000 Protestant subjects, and 4,966,000 Catholic. Of these populations in Germany, those which have their point of spiritual government without their states, and independent of them - as the Catholics have at Rome - enjoy certainly more spiritual independence, are less exposed to the intermeddling of the hand of civil power with their religious concerns, than the Protestant populations, which, since the reformation, have had church and state united in one government, and in which each autocratic sovereign is de facto a home-pope. The church affairs of Prussia in this half century, those of Saxony, Bavaria, and the smaller principalities, such as Anhalt Kothen, in all of which the state has assumed and exercised power inconsistently with the principles, doctrines, observances, and privileges of the Protestant religion, clearly show that the Protestant church on the continent, as a power, has become an administrative body of clerical functionaries, acting under the orders of the civil power or state." We must give yet one more passage of a similar import, in which the author acknowledges, with his usual candor, that the German Catholics, in the late controversy regarding mixed marriages, took the liberal side, stood on the most popular ground, and struck a successful blow for liberty: "The popish (!) priests stand upon the defense of acknowledged spiritual rights, which-if taken away by a royal edict, without any concurrence to it through a constitutional representation, and a law or act to which the people are not parties-would lay open all rights, as well as those claimed by the clergy, to the arbitrary interference of the civil power. Independent altogether of superstition or church influence, the Catholic clergy have here a support from this connexion between their cause and the cause of liberal constitutional government, as opposed to a government of arbitrary edicts and irresponsible functionaries. Between submission to the Pope in all the questions with the Catholic Church, and a representative constitution sanctioning by the voice of the people themselves the supremacy of the state in those questions, no third way is opened to the Prussian government. It seems a decree of fate in social economy, that representative governments, parliaments, shall spring up in every age from collisions between the civil and ecclesiastical powers.' Listen to these avowals of an enlightened and candid Protestant writer, all you who have been crying out for these last three centuries, that all the liberty is on the side of Protestantism, and all the slavery on that of 1 Laing, p. 194. 2 Laing, p 198. |