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Updated: May 8, 2025
Jules Simon pilots me in Paris. Sainte-Clair Deville. Pasteur. Desjardins. Drouyn de Lhuys. The reform school at Mettray. My visit to Thiers; his relations to France as historian and statesman. Duruy; his remark on rapid changes in French Ministries. Convention on copyright. Victor Hugo. Louis Blanc, his opinion of Thiers.
But it nevertheless is society, and follows its laws with as much fidelity as the world at large. It is said that Abbé Fissiaux, the head of the colony of Marseilles, when visiting Mettray, a kind of reform school, at which boys under sixteen years of age, who have committed offences without discernment, are sent, asked the colonists to point out to him the three best boys.
And it may be well to remark, that every reformatory school in Europe, even those altogether penal, as Parkhurst in England, and Mettray in France, have had some measure of success. Eighty-nine per cent. of the colons, or convicts, at Mettray, have become respectable and useful; while, of the youth sent to the ordinary jails and prisons, seventy-five per cent. are totally lost.
This was not sufficient humiliation. They exacted that the king should allow the hostile armies to cross France, in order to chase his grandson from the throne of Spain; and also that he should give up, as pledges, Cambray, Mettray, La Rochelle, and Bayonne, unless he preferred dethroning him himself, by open force, during the following year.
Here must be strictness, possibly sternness of discipline; but this is not incompatible with the qualities mentioned. It is a principle at Mettray to combine unbounded personal kindness with a rigid exclusion of personal indulgence. This principle produces good results that are two-fold in their influence. First, personal kindness in the teacher induces a reciprocal quality in the pupils.
The similar institution at Mettray, near Tours, produces similar results on a greater scale.
He had won distinction as minister of foreign affairs, but, having retired from politics, had given himself up in his old age to various good enterprises, among these, to the great Reform School at Mettray. This he urged me to visit, and, although it was at a considerable distance from Paris, I took his advice, and was much interested in it.
There is in France a system under which, when any young man is evidently going all wrong, squandering his patrimony and bringing his family into disgrace, a family council can be called, with power to place the wayward youth under restraint; and here, in one part of the Mettray establishment, were rooms in which such youths were detained in accordance with the requests of family councils.
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