ABSTRACT
Henry Redhead Yorke was one of thousands of English men and women who crossed the Channel to visit Paris after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802. His views on Napoleon are not particularly flattering but the extract highlights the difficulties the French state faced in feeding the poor after the Revolution had disbanded the Catholic Church. During the Ancien Regime, the Church was responsible for the welfare of the poor; now it devolved onto the state, which was not particularly equipped to deal with them. Soup Establishments
During the last winter (1801–1802) the distress of the lower orders had risen to such a height that it became necessary to open subscriptions for the distribution of soup to the poor. The most eminent members of the Society of Agriculture of the department of the Seine, by far the most respectable institution in France, were the foremost in forming an establishment for supplying the pressing necessities of the people. […] and by their active exertions a committee was formed [that] distributed one hundred and sixty-four thousand rations of soups, besides what was sold from different furnaces, established by voluntary contributions. […]
The committee before mentioned commenced their useful labours with the names of only one hundred subscribers. The price of each subscription is eighteen francs or fifteen shillings and ninepence sterling, and any person is at liberty to take as many subscriptions as he thinks proper. In consideration of every subscription the subscriber receives 240 bonuses of soup from any establishment he may prefer, or he may leave the disposal of them to the committee. […] Madame Bonaparte, the wife of the First Consul, who is really a pattern to her sex for her benevolence, gave 600 francs towards the establishment of a furnace in her division. The committee solicited the public functionaries, “not because they are wealthy and live in abundance, but because as the greater part of them were known for their philanthropy, their example would give weight to any other applications.” How much would you suppose the committee gained from these rich philanthropists, who fatten upon the blood of the people? The Conservative Senate granted a subsidy of 1800 livres to fit up a furnace in the division of the Luxembourg, the Council of State took forty-six subscriptions; the Bank of France sixty; the Mont de Piété twenty; and the officers of the Consular Guard eighty-four, making a sum total of about £252 15s 9d, which for the credit of the government, I think the committee should have concealed from the public.
Besides the above, I find that the First Consul put his name down, that is entered into an engagement to pay eighteen thousand livre, or £787 10 s sterling. But who shall make the Grand Sultan keep his word? Who shall enforce a bond against a chieftain with his sword drawn? There is no security for his payment except his inclination. But mark how his servile vassals boast of his munificence, by which, at the same time, they court his approbation, and work their way into his good graces. In the report made by citizens Everat and Petit, Commissioners of the Central Committee for the distribution of soup, they broke forth into the following apostrophe: – “Our eyes are turned with complacency on the one thousand subscriptions of the First Consul. Thus the Conqueror at Marengo has made humanity the companion of glory; this astonishing man, who with his triumphant hand has repaired the edifice of social happiness; this hero, who seemed to have attained the summit of perfection and grandeur, has proved that a good action may make him still mount, and lift him above sublimity itself!”
Now it happens most unluckily both for this astonishing man, and his no less astonishing trumpeters, that notwithstanding their ecstatic peroration, outsubliming sublimity itself, that this hero who has made humanity the associate of his glory, never has paid, nor to this hour has he paid one liard of the one thousand subscriptions to which he signed his name, and entered into a solemn engagement.
“If,” says Decandolle [a botanist, Augustin de Candolle], “at this time, benevolence appears to slumber, it must be ascribed less to the want of public spirit, than to the state of our circumstances; formerly there was an organized system of charity, but now, this branch of our administration is defective. Clergymen resident in every parish, whose profession gave them the privilege of asking charity from the rich, and of penetrating into the secret wants of the poor, possessed much greater opportunities of doing good, than the present board of beneficence, notwithstanding their zeal and activity. Among those religious orders, devoted to inutility, some corporations were distinguished for their zeal in affording relief to the poor, particularly the sisters of charity, who devoted their whole lives to the most fatiguing details of charitable benevolence! These respectable associations no longer exist, but the sisters of charity still survive, and are animated by the same disposition.”
In addition to these evidences of the want of public charity, it is stated in the report made by Cadet de Vaux to the Minister of the Interior, in the name of the Committee of Beneficence, that “of all the branches of political economy, the least advanced among us is public beneficence.” […]
This account […] will enable you to form some estimate of the internal administration of this capital, in relation to paupers; for there are neither parochial rates nor workhouses such as we have in England. For idle, disorderly, or viciously disposed persons no midway exists between the high road and the prison; and no kind of provision exists which affords employment to persons who, from sickness, misfortune, or any other cause, have been thrown out of work. Hence the poverty of a French pauper is the consummation of wretchedness; rags, filth, and disease waste his constitution and deform his body, while despair forever settles on his soul. If he have strength enough to carry a musket, he is instantly transported into a soldier; and if this means of subsistence should fail, his has no other alternative but to steal, or to assume the office of a beast of burden, and to perform that labour which, in other countries, is executed by horses and asses. If it be possible to convey an idea of misery more deplorable than this, the lot of the female beggar exceeds it an hundred fold. Objects of loathsome corruption and horrible aspect, they seem planted in the streets of this capital, only to laugh to scorn the Revolution, and to rebuke the gaudy and sumptuous magnificence of the upstart great. As you traverse the streets, particularly if they suspect you are a stranger, they follow you with frightful howls, conjuring you in the name of God, and with entreaties that are enough to petrify a heart of flint, to give them some charity. […] Hence, the charitable are deprived of the power of discrimination; they must attend to the cries of beggary or submit (as I have done twice since I have been here) to be pursued for half a mile by the same forlorn wretch, imploring heaven and you for mercy. This is, indeed, a wretched state of society; yet we are told, the revolution was the work of philosophy, for the benefit of the people, to dispel the darkness of their prejudices, and to remove all the moral and physical evils under which they groaned.
Source: Henry Redhead Yorke, Letters from France, in 1802 (London, 1804), pp. 166–69, 170, 174–76.https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781032618814/e9ac31eb-0a68-4fdc-b417-e6e5b1e67c6c/content/fig24_Unfig_001.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>