PARIS LITERARY GOSSIP.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 300, 3 June 1879, Page 2

PARIS LITERARY GOSSIP.

(feom oub own correspondent.)

Paris, April 12.

There is no scarcity of pamphlets, novels, and even dramas for raising the condition of the working man, without approaching the altitude of making-him a deputy or a Member of Parliament. M. Robert casts all these properties into the shade with his simple biography of " Jean Leclaire " —a name as well known as it is deservedly venerated in the artizan world, not only of this city, but of France. I Leclaire made some social, as others do chemical, experiments ; he did not write books on the organization of labor, he organized it, which was more difficult; he made a fortune, which was something still better, as it was more calculated to attract imitators. Leclaire is the man to whom reverts the honor of that plan of co-opera-tion which associates the workman with the employer in the profits of labor. Jean Leclaire was bom in 1801, in the department of the Yonne ; he was the son of a poor shoemaker, and after attending school for three years, commenced to earn his bread by herding cows and sheep ; later he became a harvestman, thresher, and an apprentice mason. At seventeen years of age he formed one of a band of harvestmen crossing Paris for the south of France. Chance led him to one of the squares of the city which workmen frequent to be hired ; his appearance pleased, and he was engaged as an apprentice house-painter for two sous a day, with a morsel of bread in the morning and the same at night, plits the privilege to dip it in a common basin of soup. His duties consisted to grind colors and execute errands. Well, at 20 years of age he was an accomplished journeyman, bought'books to remedy his deficient education ; he saved a littie money, so that at 25, he became a contractor—a master. It was at this period he discovered the process .of preparing paint with zinc for base instead of lead, thus saving the lives of house-painters. His constant aim, seconded by a courageous wife, was to remove those two great difficulties for the artizan—the commencement and the end of his trade life. He established a sick and an annuity fund ; he did more, he divided his profits among his oldest and best workmen—made them his partners. The Second Empire interfered to. prevent the laudable re-union of his men, as dangerous; the " enlighted classes" accused him of socialism, and, strangest of all, his own artizans suspected him. One evening he entered the factory just before the men were leaving for the day, and threw a bag of gold—l2,ooofr—on the floor, adding, " there nay lads is your share of the profits for the year." All comprised that" object lesson. In addition to thus distributing prizes to good workmen, he-insisted before making them partners that their private lives were exemplary. A committee of men, presided over by Leclaire, admitted Or expelled members, suspended or reprimanded. In this corporation a curious fact was established,: "drunkards either reformed or committed suicide." Leclaire proved by facts that by grouping men, creating a common bond between them, by following the Swiss national device, "one for all and all for one," artizans can be elevated to a superior morality and a higher material well-being. He died in 1872 ; lived alone as " The Hermit of Herblay," as-isolated as Alphonse Karr. Leclaire had two weaknesses —he never permitted any grammatical corrections in his writings, alleging such altered his meaning, and since the.death of his noble wife her vacant chair and couvert were placed regularly for each meal. The Marquis de Mirabeau, father of the celebrated Tribune, was " the friend of men," and was famous in the eighteenth century for his disputes with his wife, and that divided the nation into two camps. M. de Lome"nie undertook to write the life of the family ; death intervened, and the t«ro posthumous volumes terminate wfth the opening career of the great Mirabean. The work is attractive as a picture of domestic manners of the last century, and its only fault is great minuteness. The Marquis regarded matrimony as a lottery, and drew a blank ; his wife, according to his brother, "had none of the attractions of her own sex, and all the vices of the other." But man and wife lived a score of years together, and had eleven children. But when they separated, the public viewed both with profound indifference. The wife expired in positive indigence, and; a lunatic. She received tradesmen, servants, visitors, &c, in her chamber, whether in or out of bed made no difference. She was the incarnation of disorder, On one occasion she wrote an acknowledgment complimenting an officer who had no difficulty in seducing her, and once fired a pistol at her celebrated son for siding with his father. BuUhe latter, not the less, had his son imprisoned for 42. months in the Bastile as a punishment, the only form of correction he recognised, for he was a baron of the middle ages, and spoke of the rule of his house as his "reign." He made his mother and daughter live in common with his mistress, and not the less denounced to his exemplary daughter the immorality of her mother. Brought up in such a medinm, the great Mirabeau would require to have been a prodigy to have resisted the infiu-. ence of so many passions and the contagion of so many examples. Mirabeau became thus accustomed to family divisions, to the spirit of rivalry, and of duplicity excited; to the promises of heritages and to the threats of disinheritance. He was, according to his father, " monkey, wolf, and fox," as easily as circumstances demanded the role. Mirabeau's unhappy father was not the less a distinguished writer. Tocqueville defined his " Friend of Men," the invasion of democratic ideas in the feudal mind. He published a volume on taxation? which cost him a residence in the Bastile, containing views now accepted as truisms by political economy. Helost large sums of money in bad speculations, but confessed his marriage was' the worst speculation of all. It was in agriculture, the improvement of his estates, that he found the means to pay oft debts. He wrote on every subject, and incessantly. " Were my hand bronze," he was accustomed to say, " it would long since have been worn out." Mirabeau inheritedfrom his mother popular sense and, the gift o. familiarity, added to irregularity,of th

passions ; from his father, warmth of ex•pression, the word which seizes and strikes, impetuosity, and appetite for the impossible. The Revolution developed in him that strange and powerful harmony between the qualities, defects, and vicee of nis character. . Without that crisis of a society all entire, his life would have been consumed in the miserable quarrels and low adventures in which his youth was passed. In the tribune, in those solemn moments where the life of a nation is at stake, Mirabeau was at iome. He alone knew how to govern assemblies and lead crowds, and he found in his wayward stucues inexhaustible resources of improvisation. He had the art, which Gambetta pas inherited, to popularize the ideas floating vaguely in the public mind. Mirabeau's heart was grand ; he did not aim to make men perfect by paradoxoes and cynicism like Bousseau, but to break the fetters which chained them. Mirabeau was an enthusiastic realist, aspiring'to possible liberties—practising opportunism.