The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-26 00:00:00

THE CHARITIES OF FRANCE.

A clever and most interesting article published in the
.Moniteur this week, and due to the pen of M. Norbert
Billart, the well-known legist, gives us a curious and most
instructive insight into the development lately given to
charitable institutions in France. It is but justice
to remark that since Louis Napoleon has been
on the throne much has been done by him for
the relief of poverty and the suppression ei
mendicity, and much accomplished towards the
amelioration of the system of administering relief. The
solicitude of the Government for the working classes
extends from their cradles to their graves. Thus, a poor
sempstress on the point of becoming a mother is attended
by a doctor paid by Government, and receives clothing
for her infant from the Empress herself, through the
medium of the Maternal Society established and pre'
sided over by her. Seventy-six branch societies are no/
scattered over France. The mother recovered, neee°'
sarily must return to her work. What becomes of her
infant ? She takes it to the Creche early in the morning,
returns to nurse it when she pleases, and calls for it on her
way home, having to pay 2d. per day for the care bestowid
on it, and the food it requires till it be two years old, at
which time it is sent to the Salle d'Asile, of which
there are three thousand and seventy-two. Supposing
the parents die, the child is then entrusted to the care
of a workman's family, selected for their good conduct and
cleanly habits, who are paid 224 f. (29) per annum, as long
as they support it and teach it their trade. Should the
child be a girl, she is admitted at 8 years old to the
Maison Eugenie Napoleon, built with the 224,000
voted by the city of Paris for a diamond necklace,
to be presented to the Empress on her marriage,
which sum she preferred disposing of to become
the mother of 300 poor little girls. M. Norbert
Billart introduces us to many other such charitable
establishments instituted and watched overby her Majests:
- such as the payment of rent in arrear, the releasing e'
pawned articles, and the daily distribution of bread, meat'
and wood, all of which acts of true charity are paid from
the private purses of the Emperor and Empress. I must
not omit the Tourneaux Econontiques, supported by
£B,OOO a year, paid from the privy purse. Poor fam'
lies find at these economic bakehouses dishes of hot
meat, ready cooked and well seasoned, dressed with vege:
tables, at a nominal price, as well as capital soup an
bread. Of these ovens or bakehouses twenty-one are in
full work within the capital alone. Suppose the Peer
artisan to be dying, He will no longer be taken to
the grave and thrown into the earth like a pariah
—he is now, thanks to the Service des AumOniers---
a society instituted by the Emperor certain ef
having the prayers of whatever Church he may have
belonged to read over his -cofEn, and a decent-burial given
to his remains. The Prince President was one day driving
along one of the gaily-peopled boulevards of this city.
coffin on trestles was carried past ; neither priest Or
minister accompanied it. He was excessively touched 131,
this appearance of misery and abandonment, and at once
conceived the idea of the Service des Aumoniers, of the
prayers for the dying, and issued a decree, on the 21st of
March 1852, for its organisation.

MURDER AT SHREWSBURY.—We learn by 'ol°
graph that the body of a girl ten years old was found °II
Tuesday in a hovel near Shrewsbury. It had been 011 P
raged, and the head was nearly severed from the body
The deceased was last seen alive on Sunday evening wit/3A
a neighbour named MaFp. Mapp has been arrested an
charged with the murder. He has been remanded.
An address recently adopted bythe Town Council
of Halifax has been presented to Sir F. Crossley,
M.P., expressing their high appreciation of his recent 01"
to the corporation of the sum of £6,300, as an endowment
of the People's Park, presented by the worthy baronet to
his native town ten years ago. The Mayor presented the
address, and Sir F. Crossley expressed the gratificatO
with which he received it.
The directors of the Midland Railway have acted with
discretion in announcing an early meeting of the share-
holders. In view of the anxiety caused by the enormon.4
requirement of fresh capital, they have resolved to nalli!
meeting of proprietors at once, instead of waiting foLti.:
meeting which would have taken place in February: '-i-e"

promise to give "full explanations on the subject."
Mr. Gladstone's references to Ireland in his reel
speeches have elicited a long letter addressed to the rigl7.`j
hon. gentleman from Mr. Joseph Fisher, of the Waterf°7
Mail. Mr. Fisher impugns Mr. Gladstone's own Pell?,
towards Ireland. By extending the power of voting
occupiers of land who had no leases, it destroyed the ill;
ducement to give that security, and the Irish tenant °'
will has become a serf whose chains have been riveted 11
the gift of political power unaccompanied with freedoms to
exercise it. Mr. Fisher laments the decline of smallholdings'
with perhaps little reason, the occupiers of which, to the sole/
her of a million and a half, are to be found, he says, in t"
back slums of London, Liverpool, and Manchester
.5'
playing the part of filibusters and conspirators. 5:‘,.11,1
writer urges that Ireland is unjustly taxed. When ,
Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer she ea
tributed four-and-a-half millions per annum. In the Mir.
teen years preceding 1853 the Irish revenue amounted °
£59,500,000, and in the fourteen years following t:
£91,000,000. General Dunne has often brought the
subject before Parliament, and his arguments have
often been refuted. Mr. Fisher is an exception in sli„oro
posing that there is any weight in them. The 231,000,vr0
additional taxation raised in Ireland has been drawn fr()J,
increased resources. Taxes have been remitted in sever-

cases, raised in one only—the spirit duty.
The Marquis of Abercorn has been speaking at Dub ht
on the subject of art. The keynote of his remarks nait
be found in one of the sentences of his sp eecl' of
believe," said his Excellency, `° that the great deficiellj
in 'our day is that artists have not been workmen, I*-4
workmen have not been artists." For the diffusion linos
spread of art he thought it essential that the artisan Cl of
should be art students. The first exhibition—thth
1851— awoke Britain to the want of artistic effort in -eet
public buildings, and the feeling had been growing to
since. The facile production of our day has a tendenc!„.
prevent the age from attaining the highest point of i-o,
On the other hand, John of Bologna, Michael An g 9
Benvenuto Cellini, and the great artists of old wereeo
skilful at their tools as the most experienced workniti:e
and the great painters made their own colouro,

secret of compounding which has died with them.
Mr. Goldwin Smith's plan for redress to Ireland 3°4
not meet with universal approbation even among adv,riletee*
thinkers. "Philo-Celt," in the columns of the DagY
has much doubt of that " craving for national instituti°"s of
of which Mr. Goldwin Smith speaks as characteristic r
the Irish. The Protestants, who represent the greilte
proportion of the wealth and intelligence of the king ghat
wish to make the union more thorough ; while the
hig
classes of the Roman Catholics shrink aghast from 113v11,111,0
anything to do with Mr. Smith's daring experiment'L- rl •
poorer classes want to be sent clean adrift from IJr"-154t
or wish for such a separation as shall leave remaini°sj;loo
the fragile link of the crown. " Philo-Celt" thinks' "to'
that there is nothing in the objection that the sea sernr3oo
England and Ireland, for so cheap is the journeY f:ths
Dublin to Liverpool that the latter may be regarded g- to
agricultural capital of Ireland. Another objection to
Mr. Smith's plan is that it will take too lon.goro.,
obtain the sanction of Parliament. " Philo-Celt: 'tllo
poses two measures, the one a redress (n,
n
hi
grievance of landlord and tenant, and hopes that the
jI
of the Government will meet the justice of the case'uP ij
next suggests that arterial drainage should be taken the
an Imperial work. Money should be advanced b tto,
Treasury and charged on the land. This would ajit
Irish labourer remunerative work, and it Would reo4
Rigor V4O WM_ rod§ upon it. -