And the smug Puritans who amuse themselves
in France with philanthropic experiments fancy that they are making
the common people moral!
Between the market and the master's table the servants have their
secret toll, and the municipality of Paris is less sharp in collecting
the city-dues than the servants are in taking theirs on every single
thing. To say nothing of fifty per cent charged on every form of food,
they demand large New Year's premiums from the tradesmen. The best
class of dealers tremble before this occult power, and subsidize it
without a word--coachmakers, jewelers, tailors, and all. If any
attempt is made to interfere with them, the servants reply with
impudent retorts, or revenge themselves by the costly blunders of
assumed clumsiness; and in these days they inquire into their master's
character as, formerly, the master inquired into theirs. This mischief
is now really at its height, and the law-courts are beginning to take
cognizance of it; but in vain, for it cannot be remedied but by a law
which shall compel domestic servants, like laborers, to have a
pass-book as a guarantee of conduct. Then the evil will vanish as if
by magic. If every servant were obliged to show his pass-book, and if
masters were required to state in it the cause of his dismissal, this
would certainly prove a powerful check to the evil.
The men who are giving their attentions to the politics of the day
know not to what lengths the depravity of the lower classes has gone.
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