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Conversation with Mr. Guillemin, French Consul at New Orleans
Mr. Guillemin is certainly an able man and, I think, of means.
All that is exceptional. For incompetence among French agents abroad seems to be the rule. He has been living in New
Orleans some fifteen to seventeen years.
This country, he said to us, is still essentially French in
thoughts, manners, opinions, customs and fashions. We ostensibly model ourselves on France. I have often been struck
by the echoes our political passions have had here, and the analogy still existing in that matter between the population
of Louisiana and the population of France. I have often been able to predict, from the impression an event made here,
what would be the reaction in France, and I have always guessed right. The inhabitants of Louisiana are more concerned
with French affairs than with their own.
Q. That temper must be favorable to the trade relations
between us and the United States.
A. Yes, very. I consider it a matter of great interest for France
that French manners should be preserved in Louisiana. In that way one of the great American doors is open to us. It
would have been very difficult for us to have kept Louisiana as a colony, but we ought at least to have been able to keep
it long enough and take enough trouble about it to establish a French population there, which could afterwards look after
itself. We are now in a very weak position to hold our own against the pressure of the American peoples.
Almost all the land in Louisiana is still in French hands, but
big business is in American
hands. There is, one must admit, a great difference between the dispositions of the two peoples towards business. The
French of Louisiana are not enterprising in business; they do not at all like to risk what they have got on a chance, and
they fear the disgrace of bankruptcy. The Americans who descend on us every year from the North, are eaten up with
longing for wealth; they have long given up everything else for that; they come with little to lose and very few of the
honorable scruples the French feel about paying their debts. It is interesting here to study the striking differences
between the two races, and see the good and bad in each.
Q. Does not the struggle which seems to exist between the
Americans and the French in Louisiana result in bitterness between the two nations?
A. Each criticizes the other; they do not see each other much;
but at bottom there is no real hostility. The French here are not at all a conquered people as in Canada; on the contrary
they live on a basis of real and complete equality; there are frequent marriages between them and the Americans; finally
the country enjoys immense prosperity. A prosperity that increases daily. New Orleans has a very great future. If we
succeed in conquering, or only in greatly diminishing, the scourge of yellow fever, New Orleans is certainly destined
to become the largest city in the New World. In fifty years the Mississippi valley will
hold the mass of the American population, and here we hold the gate to the river.
Q. Do you think that part of this prosperity is due to the free
institutions given to Louisiana?
A. One must have seen close up as I have for fifteen years
the way business is conducted in a little, completely democratic republic, to be convinced that prosperity is not due to
political institutions, but is independent of them. You have no idea of such a Bedlam. The people appoint intriguers
without talent to office, while outstanding men seldom achieve it. The legislature ceaselessly makes, alters and repeals
the laws. It is Penelope's loom; the most important measures are sidetracked in some sort of underhand way.
The government is a prey to factions. You see what a state
of neglect and dirt the town is in; it has a revenue of a million francs. But much squandering of public money prevails.
People say that by widening the franchise one increases the independence of the vote. I think the opposite. In all
countries the working classes are at the disposition of those who employ them; and in those where they decide elections,
it is the intrigues of a few industrialists that fix the supposed free choice of the people.
However, as I was saying to you, the prosperity of Louisiana
is very great and is perpetually increasing. This government here has the merit of being very weak, and of not hampering
any freedom. But here and now there is nothing to fear from freedom. That does not apply only to Louisiana but to the
whole of the United States. I have never been able to make out how one could draw general conclusions from American
institutions; the situation of America is so special.
Q. They say that religion has little sway here over men's
souls?
A. It does not have much, but I think that that is partly due
to the bad priests they have sent us from Europe. We are flooded out with Italians who have nothing in common with
the local people, and whose morals are detestable. However there is no political animosity of any sort against the
ministers of the Catholic religion, who, for their part, never meddle in affairs. Recently they broke the windows of a
parish priest who refused to bury a suicide in holy ground, but I am sure the people acted very largely in imitation of
the scenes at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. From what I see here and in the other States of America, I am profoundly
convinced that, in the interests of religion, one ought to make an absolute division between the clergy and the State, and
leave religion to exercise the influence proper to it.
Q. How are the priests paid in Louisiana?
A. The State does not come into it at all. But the localities
generally have landed property devoted to this purpose, besides there are usual receipts, voluntary gifts, pews. ...
Q. It is said that morality, particularly among the colored
population, is very bad?
A. Great immorality does indeed prevail among the colored
population. But how could you expect it to be otherwise? The law in some sort destines women of color to wantonness.
You have no doubt noticed at theaters and elsewhere in the places reserved for half-castes, women as white as the most
beautiful European women. Well! Nonetheless they belong to the proscribed race, because tradition makes it known
that there is African blood in their veins.
These women, and many others, too, who are not as white
as they, have nonetheless by now almost the color and graces of Europe, and have often received an excellent education.
And yet the law forbids them to marry into the reigning and wealthy race of whites. If they want to contract a legitimate
union, they must marry men of their caste and share their humiliations, for men of color do not even enjoy the shameful
privileges that are accorded to their women. Even though neither their color nor their education comes to betray them,
and that is often the case, nevertheless they are condemned to continual indignities. There is not a white beggar but has
the right to bully the wretch he finds in his way and throw him in the dirt, crying out: "Get off, mulatto!"
At the head of any document he executes, the law obliges him
to write: "man of color, free." He cannot hope for anything. But I know some of them who are excellent and prosperous
men. It is by obstinately isolating itself from all the rest that the white aristocracy (as is true in general of all
aristocracies) exposes itself to dangers on the American continent and to almost certain destruction in the Antilles.
If, without giving rights to the Negroes, the white race had
at least admitted into its circle those colored people whose birth and education make them closest to it, it would infallibly
have attached them to its cause, for they really are very much nearer to the whites than to the blacks; and that would
have left nothing but brute force on the side of the Negroes. By rebuffing them, on the other hand, they have given the
slaves the one kind of power they lacked in order to become free, that of intelligence and leaders.
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