The amount of evil which the desecration of Sunday has sown can hardly be conceived. Hundreds and thousands of those honest laborers who flock to Paris and to the great manufacturing centres from the provinces have been morally and physically destroyed by it. Not only has the discharge of all religious obligations become impracticable, but there being no longer a day on which the family finds itself united, every thing like the love of home has been destroyed. The tenderest and most holy ties have been broken, the unity of family interests has ceased, and each member of the household has been left to pursue his own course. But as the human body requires some rest, the mind some relaxation, so men by way of compensation drink and dissipate, which speedily destroys their love for the fireside. On Sunday afternoons and evenings, the working-men exchange the shop only for the tavern, and they soon learn to find their relaxation and amusement there even on week-days. The consequence is, that the working-men have become demoralized; they think of nothing but work, or rather of the means by which they may procure that which will enable them to minister to their depraved appetites.
In this manner the wants of these men multiply in an inordinate degree, their minds and tastes are debased, and all their earnings soon cease to suffice for even the most indispensable articles of food and raiment. Those who break the Lord's day, though they seem to earn better wages, look wretched, and have rarely a decent coat to their backs. If the weather, or some other unforeseen cause, prevents them from working, they resort to the tavern and spend there their Sunday gains. It is notorious that exactly in those work-shops where the Sunday is habitually ignored, the hands are the most dissipated and shiftless. Even from a purely material stand-point the non-observance of Sunday is therefore a fearful social evil which has unhappily made serious progress, even in the rural districts, and especially in those immediately surrounding Paris.
This pagan system of civil legislation interferes very materially with the religious life. The French code robs the father of nearly all authority over his grown children; for instance, a son eighteen years of age may legally mortgage half the property which he is to inherit, even though it may have been earned by the parent's personal industry. Husband and wife hold their property separately, neither being liable for the debts of the other. In this way the members of the same family are invested with such widely diverging rights that they can have no interests in common. The effect of this arrangement upon the domestic relations, upon the harmony, unity, and morals of the family will be readily conceived. It is therefore to be regarded at once as a wonder and a proof of the power of the Catholic Church that there should still exist so many exemplary households in France.