CHAPTER II

IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--(_continued_)

Boulogne--Arthur Young and the Boulonnais--Boulogne and Quebec--The English and French types of civilisation--A French ecclesiastic on the religious question--The oppressive school law of 1886--The Church and the Concordat--Rural communes paying double for free schools--Vexatious regulations to prevent establishment of free schools--All ministers of religion excluded from school councils--Government officers control the whole system--Permanent magistrates also excluded--Revolt of the religious sentiment throughout France against the new system--Anxiety of Jules Ferry to make peace with the Church--Energy shown by the Catholics in resistance--St.-Omer--The Spanish and scholastic city of Guy Fawkes and Daniel O'Connell--M. De la Gorce, the historian of 1848--High character of the population--Improvement in tone of the French army--Morals of the soldiers--Devotion of the officers to their profession--Derangement of the Executive in France by the elective principle--The 'laicisation' of the schools--Petty persecutions--Children forbidden to attend the funeral of their priest--The Marist Brethren at Albert--Albert and the Maréchal d'Ancre--A chapter of history in a name--Little children stinting their own food, to send another child to school--President Carnot and the nose of M. Ferry--French irreligion in the United States--The case of Girard College--Can Christianity be abolished in France?--The declared object of the Republic--Morals of Artois--Dense population--Fanatics of the family--Increase of juvenile crime--American experience of the schools without religion--A New England report on 'atrocious and flagrant crimes in Massachusetts'--Relative increase of native white population and native crime in America--An American Attorney-General calls the public school system 'a poisonous fountain of misery and moral death'--A local heroine of St.-Omer--The statue of Jacqueline Robins--The Duke of Marlborough and the Jesuits College--A curious sidelight on English politics in 1710--How St.-Omer escaped a siege 23-43