The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1868-05-24
1m x1ucu CAPITAL.

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. TIE I1NCK CAPITAL.
Whatever is done in Paris in the way of
moral publication is done by legislation.
Catholic cities may 1egislate on the subject,
but Protestant cities may not. The streets
and public places of London and New York
are, therefore, hideous blots on Christianity
and civilization, but the same cannot be
said of Catholic Paris. Preaching and
moral suasiOn are excellent things, but
police regulations are better. 1t is too late
in the day to set up theory against practice.
Your moral suasiOn has failed, our police
try our police regulations. Our project ad
mits that there must he vice in a great city
like this, and he does not pretend that he
is strong enough, OF that it is his mission to
attempt its total eradication. When NJ.
Haussmann saw that the teachings of good
of the city, he said to the Archbishop of
Paris: "Let me see if can't do what you
have failed to do" So he commenced by
shutting vice up in enclosures ,chers 1t could
only be seen by going iM search Of 1t. That
| was q rightly stepinL the great work to
commence with. By it the streets were
swept, as if by magic, of the bad women
and bad men that infested them, and they
have been maintained clear ever since. If
bad people want to meet other bad people,
they can go, in full liberty, to the public
| balls and other places shut off from the view
OF the streets, and thus the project has Sc
cured for the, streets of the capital q con-
dition OF things which enables families to
promenade in the evening rs well as the day
in whatever direction they please, and as
they please.
But his healthful regulations do not stop
concerts, public balls, and drinking places
Mt midnight, and he prevents, by his salu-
tary rule, the brutality and vice that follow
drunkenness. A man who is seen drunk in
Paris is disgraced thereby almost as much as
If he had been in the pcnitentiary, and this
in keeping sober. Thus, by police regula-
tions, the whole community has been driven
into the salutary and moral habit of going
to bed early-that is tO,say, early in COM
parison to other large cities, for in London,
for example, what there is Of legality in the
matter is fixed at four o'clock. But not
only is vice SO shut off from the public eve,
that to find it one must go in search of it,
but the regulations follow it into it's hiding
places, so that even there it requires the
exercised eye OF the vicious to detect its
most blamable features.
1t is worthy of remark that there is no
resistance to these stringent measures of the |
project. No one discusses them even.
When a law is logical, and brings with it
such palpably good results every one accepts |
it and feels the better forit. NJ. Haussmann !
has, in fact, solved the great problem of |
q community by the gradual
pressure Of the law. At any rate, he has |
brought the surface to such u condition that
q gentleman may bring his family to Paris |
and promenade the streets for weeks,
aud not witness one of the offensive scenes
that are SO common at night in the streets |
Of the other large cities of the world. But |
now that he has FURNISHED up the surface, |
lot no hot ho so n
strata. He is reproached with not exercis- |
ing sufficient control over the stage and the |
current literature of the day. The censor
ship on these two agents of corruption does
not belong to him, it is true but he is the
all-powerfM man In the control of the des-
TIMES of the city, and the people look to
him for everything.
Every second or third day IL new piece
is produced ut one of the thirty theatres of
Paris, and something ike-two hundred
original novels are being published in num-
bers every day the year round. These
figures will give the reader some idea of the
amount of literary production at Paris, and
also the amount of labor required of the
ccnsors, who are obliged to read every word
of these productions before they are au-
thorized. The theatrical pieces must be
read before they are played, the romances
authorized for sale on the highway-that is
to say, for cOlportage. With such an i'm
mense amount of literary production, the
censors, as the reader may well suppose,
are the most worried men in Paris. It is a
wonder, in fact, they do not all finish,
where few of them certainly do, in the
mad-house. 1t will be understood, also,
that some theatrical pieces, as wellaas ro-
mances, must pass their bureau, which
ought not to. 1t is well known, too, that
many entire suppressions are made, as
we'll as many partial ones. Of course, some
of these suppressions appear to some people
arbitrary, and to others absurd but we do
not all see things from the same point of
best they can. They suppress with equal
rigor political illusions and immoralities.