I.

CHAP. their respective districts, and see that the rules of the University were strictly observed; and lest this examination should be carelessly or unfaithfully performed, there were from twenty to thirty general inspectors. The members of the University were bound each to inform the grand master and his officers of any thing contrary to the rules, which might occur within their knowledge: they were bound to obey him in whatever he might command for the Emperor's service; and whosoever was expelled, or left the University without a letter of dimission, became thereby incapable of holding any civil employment. The pupils were not permitted to correspond with any persons except their parents, or persons acting for their parents; and all letters which they received or wrote passed through the hands of the censor.

Uniformity of educa

tion.

The University was one of Buonaparte's favourite plans : it well exemplifies his precipitate temper and his thorough despotism. In the edict which erected it, the Napoleonic dynasty was styled the conservator of the liberal ideas which the French constitutions had announced; . . that very edict was an act for enforcing uniformity of education throughout the empire! All persons who were previously employed in tuition were by this act incorporated as members of the University, without their consent, and bound to all its regulations: they were compelled to change the course of instruction to which they had been accustomed, and to follow a prescribed form, whether they approved it or not: they were subjected to the inquisitorial visits of the inspectors, and to the arbitrary power of the Grand Master: they were heavily taxed for the support of this system, and ultimately were to be sacrificed to it; for it was the declared intention of government gradually to diminish the number of their schools till they should all be shut up, for

I.

the purpose of multiplying the Lyceums. The insolent injustice CHAP. of such a measure would produce disgust and consequent neglect in many instances, the suddenness of the change would occasion disorder and confusion in all; and the itinerant inspectors were less likely to amend what was amiss, than to act in a vexatious spirit of interference, or with corrupt connivance, according as the views and temper of the individual inclined him to the one abuse or to the other. Except the miserable schoolmasters who were pressed into the University, its other members were taken from such persons hanging loose upon society as had interest enough to obtain the better appointments, or were forlorn enough to accept the worst. Yet from some thousands of men, not prepared by previous habitudes and studies, not selected for the fitness of their acquirements, their talents, or their disposition to the course of life in which they were to be placed, but brought together by the drag-net of despotism, Buonaparte expected and demanded that singleness of purpose, that totality of interests, that subserviency of all the parts to the whole, that disciplined unanimity which had existed among the Jesuits, and was the perfection of their consummate system. But the great object of his policy was answered; the youth of France were brought up in military habits; they were taught from their earliest boyhood to look to him for patronage, and to consider their own advancement as connected with the prosperity and permanence of his empire: if the moral and religious part of their education was worse than neglected, it mattered not, or rather it accorded with his views and wishes; they were then fitter instruments for the work in which they were to be employed.

the revo

The revolution had seared the feelings and hardened the Effects of hearts of a light-minded people this was the natural effect of lution upon

morals.

I.

of divorces.

Obscene

publications.

CHAP. its horrors and of the ruin which it had spread*. That immorality which a succession of vicious courts had encouraged by their example, was released by the revolution from all restraints of law and of external decorum. The religious sanction of Frequency marriage was destroyed, and the unbounded facility of divorce rendered the civil ceremony a mere form, which was no longer binding than till one of the parties might choose to throw off the engagement. The literature of France, always, to the disgrace of the nation, more licentious than that of any other country, became, under the perfect freedom of the press, obscene to a degree too loathsome for expression; the arts were prostituted to the same devilish purpose; and the line of distinction between vice and virtue, which can never be too strongly marked, was as completely effaced in general practice as in the theories of those sophists who have laboured to corrupt their fellowcreatures. Such things were beneath the consideration of a legislature which arrogated to itself the praise of philosophical liberality; or, rather, they accorded with the views of that foul philosophy, which, regarding man as a mere material machine, would degrade him to the condition of the beasts that perish. Gambling, also, which every government that regards the welfare of its subjects endeavours to check by salutary laws, was encouraged by authority in France. Every week two or three lotteries were drawn, in which the poorest of the poor were tempted to engage, there being shares as low as sixpence. Nor must it be supposed that this measure was defended upon

Gaming

houses esta

blished by

government.

* Of the persons who died in Paris in the year 1800, more than two-fifths expired in the hospitals:.. from this single fact some estimate may be formed of the numbers who were ruined by the revolution.

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the specious ground that governments ought to regulate the CHAP. vices which they cannot prevent, and therefore may allowably make them conducive to the advantage of the state. The French government legalized this vice in its fullest extent, took to itself a monopoly of the gaming houses, farmed them at one time, and afterwards administered them by agents of its own. This profligate measure originated with the Directory, and was continued by Buonaparte: whatever tended to make men prodigal and desperate accorded with the spirit of his system, and under that system every thing tended to that effect.

of primo

Of all the previous measures of the revolutionists there was abolition none which more entirely suited his views than the abolition of geniture. the law of primogeniture; that law, which perhaps, next to the institution of marriage, has produced more good, moral and political, than any other act of human legislation. The revolutionists were not mistaken when they believed that that structure of social order which it was their determination to destroy rested upon this basis; and they were too short-sighted to perceive that in breaking it up they were acting as pioneers to prepare the way for despotism. Buonaparte was thus enabled to surround himself with an aristocracy of his own making, who possessed no natural influence in the country, who represented none of its interests, who had no inheritance of honour to maintain and to bequeath, but were his mere creatures and dependents. In this respect the government of France under the Emperor Napoleon was assimilated to the barbarous despotisms of Persia and Turkey and this was the direct consequence of a measure, which was intended to secure and perpetuate the triumph of liberty and equality! But it was not the only consequence: the evil extended throughout the whole middle class of society. The best motive whereby men

I.

CHAP. are induced to labour for the accumulation of wealth, the motive by which a propensity, mean in itself, is exalted and refined, was removed when the hope of building up a family was taken away. Mansions would not be erected, and domains ornamented and improved, when, upon the death of the proprietor, the estates were to be divided. There no longer existed the same means for that liberal expenditure which called forth ingenuity, encouraged the arts, and afforded employment to useful industry in all its branches. Properties were broken down, which in former times enabled the father to set his younger children fairly forward in the world, and the heads of families to assist their relatives,.. from pride sometimes, if a kindlier principle were wanting. And as estates by this levelling act were divided into smaller and smaller portions at every descent, more adventurers were thrown upon the public with less parental aid. The political system of the revolutionists, like their godless philosophy, looked to the present alone, deriving no wisdom from the past, and having for the future neither care nor hope.

Barba

rizing ef

measure.

The growth of that middle order was thus prevented in fects of this which the strength of civil society mainly consists; which is the most favourable to the developement of our intellectual faculties, and to the improvement of our moral nature; to knowledge, and contentment, and virtue; to public freedom, individual happiness, and general prosperity. No measure could more certainly tend to perpetuate barbarous institutions than one by which property was thus divided in every generation: and the state of things among the Huns and Tartars of old scarcely operated more exclusively to form a military people than all the circumstances of France under its military Emperor. The conscription was as indiscriminate as the