CHAP. I. Conse quences of ary schemes. Meantime the irrecoverable years were passing on, and the rising generation was sacrificed to the crude theories and ridiculous experiments of sophists in power; men whose ignothese vision rance might deserve compassion, if their absurdity did not provoke indignation as well as contempt, and their presumptuous wickedness call for unmingled abhorrence. When the subject was renewed under the consular government, the frightful consequences had become too plain to be dissembled. A view of the moral and religious state of France was drawn up from official reports which were sent in from every department, and it was acknowledged that the children throughout the republic had been left to run wild in idleness during the whole Analyse des preceding course of the revolution. They are without the baur,quoted idea of a God," said the Report, "without a notion of right Procès Ver by Portalis. smith, Re p. 282. 66 L. Gold- and wrong. The barbarous manners which have thus arisen cueil, T. i have produced a ferocious people, and we cannot but groan over the evils which threaten the present generation and the future." Attachment of the Jaco naparte. It suited the views of Buonaparte that his government bines to Buo should hold this language while he was negociating the Concordat, for the sake of obtaining the papal sanction to his authority. Perhaps he was then hesitating whether to take the soumises à des demonstrations aussi rigoureuses que les sciences exactes et physiques... Tandis que la liberté politique, et la liberté illimitée de l'industrie et du commerce detruiront les inegalités monstreuses des richesses, l'analyse, appliquée à tous les genres d'idées dans toutes les écoles, detruira l'inégalité des lumieres, plus fatale encore et plus humiliante... L'analyse est donc essentiellement un instrument indispensable dans une grande démocratie; la lumiere qu'elle repandra a tant de facilité à pénétrer partout, que comme tous les fluides, elle tend sans cesse à se mettre au niveau.” Rapport de Lakanal sur les Ecoles Normales, du 3 Brumaire, an. 111. (24 Oct. 1794.) I. right hand way or the left; whether to build up again the CHAP. ruined institutions of France, strengthen the throne on which he had resolved to take his seat by an alliance with the altar; and in restoring to the kingdom all that it was possible to restore while he retained the sovereignty to himself, engraft upon the new dynasty those principles which had given to the old its surest strength when it was strongest, and a splendour, of which no change of fortune could deprive it. Two parties would be equally opposed to this, the Jacobines and the Royalists. The latter it was impossible to conciliate: they would have stood by the crown even if it were hanging upon a bush; but their allegiance being founded upon principle and feeling,. . upon the sense of honour and of duty,.. would not follow the crown when it was transferred by violence and injustice from one head to another. He found the Jacobines more practicable. They indeed had many sympathies with Buonaparte: he favoured that irreligion to which they were fanatically attached, because it at once flattered their vanity and indulged their vices; his schemes of conquest offered a wide field for their ambition and their avarice: and what fitter agents could he desire than men who were troubled with no scruples of conscience or of honour; whom no turpitude could make ashamed; who shrunk from no crimes, and were shocked by no atrocities? Thus Buonaparte judged concerning them, and he reasoned rightly. The Jacobines both at home and abroad became his most devoted and obsequious adherents: they served him in England as partizans and advocates, denying or extenuating his crimes, justifying his measures, magnifying his power, and reviling his opponents; on the Continent they co-operated with him by secret or open treason, as occasion offered; in France they laid aside in his behalf that hatred to monarchy which they had not only pro CHAP. fessed but sworn, and swearing allegiance to a military despotism, gave that despotism their willing and zealous support. I. A system of education for his views. Such persons were still a minority in France; but their necessary activity, their arts, and their audacity supplied the want of numbers. It was essential to his views that a succession of such men should be provided, and that the French nation should by the sure process of education be moulded to his will, and made to receive the stamp of his iron institutions. Many of the clergy, when the proscription which had driven them from their country was removed, had opened schools on their return from exile, as the readiest means of obtaining a maintenance for themselves and of performing their Christian duties. Their success was incompatible with Buonaparte's policy: he wanted not a moral and a religious*, but a military people. After some preparatory attempts, all tending to the same object, the Imperial University was established; . . a name which, it was admitted, had altogether a different signification from what it bore under the old order of things. The legitimate principle was proclaimed, that the direction of public education belongs to the state; the intolerant one was deduced and put in practice, that therefore a monopoly of education should be vested in the new establishment. Imperial At the head of this University there was a Grand Master, for whom Buonaparte, indulging in such things his own taste as well as that of the French people, appointed a splendid * He is reported to have said, Les prêtres ne considèrent ce monde que comme une diligence pour conduire à l'autre. Je veux qu'on remplisse la diligence de bons soldats pour mes armées. The speech seems to authenticate itself; but whether it be authentic or not, this was the spirit and the declared object of his institutions, 1. costume; his civil-list was 150,000 francs, and he had the CHAP. power of nominating to all the inferior appointments, . . an enormous influence, if it had been intended that he should be any thing more than the mere organ of the Emperor's will. There were under him a chancellor, a treasurer, with salaries of 15,000 francs each; ten counsellors for life, twenty counsellors in ordinary, the former with salaries of 10, the latter of 6,000 francs; and thirty inspectors general, whose salary was 6000 also, and whose travelling expenses were paid. Next in rank were the Rectors of Academies: this too was an old word with a new signification. There were to be as many Academies in the empire as there were courts of appeal. Each Rector had an establishment for his inferior jurisdiction analogous to that of the Grand Master; his salary was 6000 francs, with 3000 for his official expenses, and the additional emolument which he derived as Dean of the Faculties. He ranked with the Bishop of the diocese; and the rivalry which this pretension occasioned was in no degree mitigated by the spirit in which the Imperial University was founded and administered. The Faculties, or Schools of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, Physical Sciences, and Literature, were under the Rector's authority, as were the Lyceums, Colleges, Institutions, Pensions, and even the Primary Schools, which were not considered as beneath the cognizance of the University, although the government had taken care that even these should not be under the direction of the clergy, having committed them to the superintendence of a certain number of inhabitants, among whom the parochial priest had only a single voice. All seminaries, therefore, of every kind belonged to the University, and contributed in no small degree to its revenues. For it was not only required that every person who opened a Pension or Institution must be a graduate, but also that he must take out a brevet from the I. CHAP. Grand Master, the price of which varied from 200 to 600 francs, and which was to be renewed at the same cost every ten years. Besides these decennial droits, a fourth part of the same sum was exacted annually; and a tax was levied upon the pupils of five per cent upon what they paid to the master. It was the purpose of the government to discourage these schools, which, as being mostly in the hands of the clergy, were nowise congenial with the principles and views of Buonaparte: therefore they were thus heavily taxed; and lest they should be supported in spite of all discouragement, a decree was issued, declaring that the Lyceums might at any time fill up their numbers by taking from the nearest Pensions or Institutions as many pupils above the age of nine as would complete their complement. The precise effect of this iniquitous decree was, that exactly in proportion as any particular Lyceum was known to be ill conducted, and as parents were unwilling to entrust their children there, it became impossible for any better seminary to exist in its neighbourhood. Communal There were two other kind of seminaries which it was in like manner the intention of the Imperial government to destroy by indirect means,.. the Communal Colleges and the Eccle-. siastical Schools. More than four hundred of the former had been founded at the expense of their respective communes, as soon as any hope appeared that a settled order of things might be maintained in France. But because every thing far and near was regulated by the new despotism, the money which they levied upon themselves for this purpose went, like other imposts, to the capital: and was thrown into a common fund, from whence an allowance to each particular college was made, not according to its necessary expenditure, but according to the pleasure of the minister to whom the distribution was confided. Thus the design of starving the colleges, and rendering |