Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1879-01-31
Our Sister Republic-EducatiOn
in France.

A Paris letter to a London paper
says: One o fthe most vital questions
with which the government will have
to deal this year is that which concerns
education. The advanced Liberals are
bent upon taking instruction out of
the hands of priests and nuns, who
have no sympathy with the Republic,
and placing it in secular hands. The
municipal councils of Paris, repre-
sented by its president, two vice presi-
dents and three secretaries, in an in
terview with the minister of public
instruction, urged that elementary
teaching in Paris should be exclu-
siyely lay. NJ. Bardoux was not pre-
pared to give an answer on this Ques-
ton, but promised TO do so on the 18th
inst. The Conservatives say that Nj.
Dufaure has been furnished with Il
capital opportunity of dying with
glory that there are plenty of lay
schools; that no one obliges free
thinking or Indifferent parents to con-
fine the education of their children to
congregationists, and that to suppress
the congregation schools would be an
act of tyranny and oppression, anti
Liberal and anti Republican. They
urge that there Christian schools both
in Belleville and Montmartre which
have never interfered with the politi-
cal prOcliyities of these nest-beds of
Radicalism. A writer of considerable
merit, who has adopted the signature
of "Ignotus," furnishes us some infor-
nation on the subject of the campaign
which the municipal council has com
menced against the educational nuns
and those who devote themselves to
the hospitals. Seeing all the good
done by the Seurs Hospitalieres.
"lgnotus" says he was deeply grieved
the other day to learn that the Sisters
of st. Vincent de Paul, who devote all
their time to the sick, had been driven
from the hospital in the Rue de
Sevres. The hospital service of Paris.
he observes, is in a great measure con
ided to nuns. The Augustines are
attached to the Hotel Dieu, the Lari-
boisiere, Charlie, and Beaujon hospit-
ais of st. Antoine, Quinze-V ingt. etc:
the Sisters of st. Thomas de Villen-
euve the hospital for sick children :
finally, the Sisters of Vincent de Paul
do duty in many civil and in all
military hospitals. 1t is now pro
posed to replace all these nuns,
as they have already been re-
placed at the mad-houses Of
Salpetriere and Electra and in the
lying-in hospitals, bylay nurses. The
nurses were only paid fS a year the
lay nurses receive e24. "Ignotus "
adds: The Sisters of st. Vincent
de Paul are the chief hospital sisters.
and the superiOress, who has under
her orders t%wenty-six thousand nuns.
is elected. Last year the superioress
was Mile Querette, the sister of the
Bishop of Arras, who has now gone
to Afghanistan. The central house
contains two hundred sisters and a
seminary for two hundred and fifty
novices.' POstulantes are received
from eighteen to twenty-eight years of
age; and this order, unlike other or.
ders, does not reject widows lest
Wondering ashes should still burn
in the heart" According to "Igno-
tus the doctors much prefer the Sis
tiers TO the lay nurses, as the latter
have lite authority over the sick, and
have other matters to occupy their
attentton-matters connected either
with the past Or the future. The sis
ters, on the contrary, who have re.
nounced the world, think only of theii
patients.