The Modern Regime Volume I Part 17

BOOK THIRD. OBJECT AND MERITS OF THE SYSTEM.

CHAPTER I. RECOVERY OF SOCIAL ORDER.

I. Rule as the ma.s.s want to be ruled.

How Napoleon comprehends the sovereignty of the people.--His maxim on the will of the majority and on the office of government.--Two groups of prominent and obvious desires in 1799.

However clear and energetic his artistic convictions may be, his mind is absorbed by the preoccupations of the ruler: It is not enough for him that his edifice should be monumental, symmetrical, and beautiful. As he lives in it and derives the greatest benefit from it, he wants first of all that it should be fit to live in, habitable for Frenchmen of the year 1800. Consequently, he takes into account the habits and dispositions of his tenants, the pressing and permanent wants. But these needs must not be theoretic and vague, but verified and defined; for he is as accurate as he is shrewd, and deals only with positive facts.

"My political system," says he to the Council of State,[3101] "is to rule men as the ma.s.s want to be ruled... By const.i.tuting myself a Catholic I put an end to the war in La Vendee; by turning into a Moslem I established myself in Egypt: by turning ultramontane[3102] I gained over the priests in Italy. Were I to govern a population of Jews, I would restore the temple of Solomon. I shall speak just in this fas.h.i.+on about liberty in the free part of St. Domingo; I shall confirm slavery in the Ile-de-France and even in the slave section of St. Domingo, with the reservation of diminis.h.i.+ng and limiting slavery where I maintain it, and of restoring order and keeping up discipline where I maintain freedom. I think that is the way to recognize the sovereignty of the people."

"Now, in France, at this epoch, there are two groups of preponderant desires which evidently outweigh all others, one dating back the past ten years, and the other for a century or more: the question is how to satisfy these, and the sagacious constructor, who estimates them for what they are worth, combines to this end the proportions, plan, arrangement, and entire interior economy of his edifice.

II. The Revolution Ends.

Necessities dating from the Revolution.--Lack of security for Persons, Property, and Consciences.--Requisite conditions for the establishment of order.--End of Civil war, Brigandage, and Anarchy.--Universal relief and final security.

The first of these two needs is urgent, almost physical. For the last ten years, the government has not done its duty, or has ruled in a contrary sense. By turns or at the same time its impotence and injustice have been deplorable. It has committed or allowed too many outrages on persons, property, and consciences. All in all the Revolution did nothing else, and it is time that this should stop. Safety and security for consciences, property, and persons is the loud and unanimous outcry vibrating in all hears.[3103]--To calm things down, many novelties are required: To start with, the political and administrative concentration just described, a centralization of all powers in one hand, local powers conferred by the central power, and, to exercise this supreme power a resolute chief, equal in intelligence to his high position. Next, a regularly paid army,[3104] carefully equipped, properly clothed and fed, strictly disciplined and therefore obedient and able to do its duty without wavering or faltering, like any other instrument of precision.

An active police force and gendarmerie kept on a tight rein.

Administrators independent of those under their jurisdiction, and judges independent of those due to be tried. All appointed, maintained, watched, and restrained from above, as impartial as possible, sufficiently competent, and, in their official spheres, capable functionaries. Finally, freedom of wors.h.i.+p, and, accordingly, a treaty with Rome and the restoration of the Catholic Church, that is to say, a legal recognition of the orthodox hierarchy and of the only clergy which the faithful may accept as legitimate, in other words, the inst.i.tution of bishops by the Pope, and of priests by the bishops.

This done, the rest is easily accomplished. A well-led army corps marches along and tramples out the embers of the conflagration now kindling in the West, while religious toleration extinguishes the smoldering fires of popular insurrection. Henceforth, there is an end to civil war.[3105] Regiments ready to act in harmony with the military commissions[3106] purge the South and the valley of the Rhone; thenceforth, there are no more roving bands in the rural districts, while brigandage on a grand scale, constantly repressed, ceases, and after this, that on a small scale. No more chouans, chauffeurs, or barbets;[3107] The mail-coach travels without a guard, and the highways are safe.[3108] There is longer any cla.s.s or category of citizens oppressed or excluded from the common law, the latest Jacobin decrees and the forced loan have been at once revoked: n.o.ble or plebeian, ecclesiastic or layman, rich or poor, former emigre or former terrorist, every man, whatever his past, his condition, or his opinions, now enjoys his private property and his legal rights; he has no longer to fear the violence of the opposite party; he may relay on the protection of the authorities,[3109] and on the equity of the magistrates.[3110] So long as he respects the law he can go to bed at night and sleep tranquilly with the certainty of awaking in freedom on the morrow, and with the certainty of doing as he pleases the entire day; with the privilege of working, buying, selling, thinking, amusing himself,[3111] going and coming at his pleasure, and especially of going to ma.s.s or of staying away if he chooses. No more jacqueries either rural or urban, no more proscriptions or persecutions and legal or illegal spoliations, no more intestine and social wars waged with pikes or by decrees, no more conquests and confiscations made by Frenchmen against each other. With universal and unutterable relief people emerge from the barbarous and anarchical regime which reduced them to living from one day to another, and return to the pacific and regular regime which permits them to count on the morrow and make provision for it. After ten years of hara.s.sing subjection to the incoherent absolutism of unstable despotism, here, for the first time, they find a rational and stable government, or, at least, a reasonable, tolerable, and fixed degree of it. The First Consul is carrying out his declarations and he has declared that "The Revolution has ended."[3112]

III. Return of the Emigres.

Lasting effect of revolutionary laws.--Condition of the emigres.--Progressive and final amnesty.--They return.--They recover a portion of their possessions.--Many of them enter the new hierarchy.--Indemnities for them incomplete.

The main thing now is to dress the severe wounds it has made and which are still bleeding, with as little torture as possible, for it has cut down to the quick, and its amputations, whether foolish or outrageous, have left sharp pains or mute suffering in the social organism.

One hundred and ninety-two thousand names have been inscribed on the list of emigres[3113] the terms of the law, every emigre is civilly dead, and his possessions have become the property of the Republic;" if he dared return to France, the same law condemned him to death; there could be no appeal, pet.i.tion, or respite; it sufficed to prove ident.i.ty and the squad of executioners was at once ordered out. Now, at the beginning of the Consulate, this murderous law is still in force; summary proceedings are always applicable,[3114] and one hundred and forty-six thousand names still appear on the mortuary list. This const.i.tutes a loss to France of 146,000 Frenchmen, and not those of the least importance--gentlemen, army and navy officers, members of parliaments, priests, prominent men of all cla.s.ses, conscientious Catholics, liberals of 1789, Feuillantists of the Legislative a.s.sembly, and Const.i.tutionalists of the years III and V. Worse still, through their poverty or hostility abroad, they are a discredit or even a danger for France, as formerly with the Protestants driven out of the country by Louis XIV.[3115]--To these 146,000 exiled Frenchmen add 200,000 or 300,000 others, residents, but semi-proscribed:[3116] First, those nearly related and allied to each emigre, excluded by the law from "every legislative, administrative, munic.i.p.al and judicial function,"

and even deprived of the elective vote. Next, all former n.o.bles or enn.o.bled, deprived by the law of their status as Frenchmen and obliged to re-naturalize themselves according to the formalities.

It is, accordingly, almost the entire elite of old France which is wanting in the new France, like a limb violently wrenched and half-detached by the unskillful and brutal scalpel of the revolutionary "sawbones"; for both the organ and the body are not only living, but they are still feverish and extremely sensitive; it is important to avoid too great irritation; inflammation of any kind would be dangerous.

A skilful surgeon, therefore, must mark the places for the st.i.tches, not force the junctures, but antic.i.p.ate and prepare for the final healing process, and await the gradual and slow results of vital effort and spontaneous renewal. Above all he must not alarm the patient. The First Consul is far from doing this; on the contrary his expressions are all encouraging. Let the patient keep quiet, there shall be no re-st.i.tching, the wound shall not be touched. The const.i.tution solemnly declares that the French people shall never allow the return of the emigres,[3117]

and, on this point, the hands of future legislators are already tied fast; it prohibits any exception being added to the old ones.--But, first, by virtue of the same const.i.tution, every Frenchman not an emigre or banished has the right to vote, to be elected, to exercise every species of public function; consequently, twelve days later,[3118] a mere order of the Council of State restores civil and political rights to former n.o.bles and the enn.o.bled, to the kinsmen and relations of emigres, to all who have been dubbed emigres of the interior and whom Jacobin intolerance had excluded, if not from the territory, at least from the civic body: here are 200,000 or 300,000 Frenchmen already brought back into political communion if not to the soil.--They had succ.u.mbed to the coup-d'etat of Fructidor; naturally, the leading fugitives or those transported, suffering under the same coup-d'etat, were restored to political rights along with them and thus to the territory--Carnot, Barthelemy, Lafont-Ladebat, Simeon, Poissy d'Anglas, Mathieu Dumas, in all thirty-nine, designated by name;[3119] very soon after. Through a simple extension of the same resolution, others of the Fructidor victims, a crowd of priests huddled together and pining away on the Ile-de-Re, the most unfortunate and most inoffensive of all.[3120]--Two months later, a law declares that the list of emigres is definitely closed;[3121] a resolution orders immediate investigation into the claims of those who are to be struck off the list; a second resolution strikes off the first founders of the new order of things, the members of the National a.s.sembly "who voted for the establishment of equality and the abolition of n.o.bility;" and, day after day, new erasures succeed each other, all specific and by name, under cover of toleration, pardon, and exception:[3122] on the 19th of October 1800, there are already 1200 of them. Bonaparte, at this date, had gained the battle of Marengo; the surgical restorer feels that his hands are more free; he can operate on a larger scale and take in whole bodies collectively. On the 20th of October 1800, a resolution strikes off entire categories from the list, all whose condemnation is too grossly unjust or malicious,[3123] at first, minors under sixteen and the wives of emigres; next, farmers, artisans, workmen, journeymen and servants with their wives and children and at last 18,000 ecclesiastics who, banished by law, left the country only in obedience to the law. Besides these, "all individuals inscribed collectively and without individual denomination," those already struck off, but provisionally, by local administrations; also still other cla.s.ses. Moreover, a good many emigrants, yet standing on the lists, steal back one by one into France, and the government tolerates them.[3124] Finally, eighteen months later, after the peace of Amiens and the Concord at,[3125] a senatus-consulte ends the great operation; an amnesty relieves all who are not yet struck off, except the declared leaders of the militant emigration, its notables, and who are not to exceed one thousand; the rest may come back and enjoy their civic rights; only, they must promise "loyalty to the government established under the const.i.tution and not maintain directly or indirectly any connection or correspondence with the enemies of the State." On this condition the doors of France are thrown open to them and they return in crowds.

But their bodily presence is not of itself sufficient; it is moreover essential that they should not be absent in feeling, as strangers and merely domiciliated in the new society. Were these mutilated fragments of old France, these human shreds put back in their old places, simply attached or placed in juxtaposition to modern France, they would prove useless, troublesome and even mischievous. Let us strive, then, to have them grafted on afresh through adherence or complete fusion; and first, to effect this, they must not be allowed to die of inanition; they must take root physically and be able to live. In private life, how can former proprietors, the n.o.blesse, the parliamentarians, the upper bourgeoisie, support themselves, especially those without a profession or pursuit, and who, before 1789, maintained themselves, not by their labor, but by their income? Once at home, they can no longer earn their living as they did abroad; they can no longer give lessons in French, in dancing, or in fencing.--There is no doubt but that the senatus-consulte which amnesties them restores to them a part of their unsold possessions;[3126] but most of these are sold and, on the other hand, the First Consul, who is not disposed to re-establish large fortunes for royalists,[3127] retains and maintains the largest portion of what they have been despoiled of in the national domain: all woods and forests of 300 arpents[3128] and over, their stock and property rights in the great ca.n.a.ls, and their personal property already devoted to the public service. The effective rest.i.tution is therefore only moderate; the emigres who return recover but little more than one-twentieth of their patrimony, one hundred millions[3129] out of more than two milliards.

Observe, besides, that by virtue even of the law and as admitted by the First Consul,[3130] this alms is badly distributed; the most needy and the greatest number remain empty-handed, consisting of the lesser and medium cla.s.s of rural proprietors, especially of country gentlemen whose domain, worth less than 50,000 francs, brings in only 2000 or 3000 francs income;[3131] a domain of this size came within reach of a great many purses, and hence found purchasers more readily and with greater facility than a large holding; the State was almost always the seller, and thenceforth the old proprietor could make no further claim or pretension.--Thus, for many of the emigres, "the senatus-consulte of the year X is simply a permit to starve to death in France "and,[3132] four years later,[3133] Napoleon himself estimates that "40,000 are without the means of subsistence." They manage to keep life and soul together and nothing more;[3134] many, taken in and cared for by their friends or relations, are supported as guests or parasites, somewhat through compa.s.sion and again on humanitarian grounds. One recovers his silver plate, buried in a cellar; another finds notes payable to bearer, forgotten in an old chest. Sometimes, the purchaser of a piece of property, an honest man, gives it back at the price he paid for it, or even gratis, if, during the time he had held it, he had derived sufficient profit from it. Occasionally, when the adjudication happens to have been fraudulent, or the sale too irregular, and subject to legal proceedings, the dishonest purchaser does not refuse a compromise.

But these cases are rare, and the evicted owner, if he desires to dine regularly, will wisely seek a small remunerative position and serve as clerk, book-keeper or accountant. M. des Echerolles, formerly a brigadier-general, keeps the office of the new line of diligences at Lyons, and earns 1200 francs a year. M. de Puymaigre, who, in 1789, was worth two millions, becomes a controleur des droits reunis at Briey with a salary of 2400 francs.--In every branch of the new administration a royalist is welcome to apply for a post;[3135] however slightly recommended, he obtains the place. Sometimes he even receives one without having asked for it; M. de Vitrolles[3136] thus becomes, in spite of himself, inspector of the imperial sheepfolds; this fixes his position and makes it appear as if he had given in his adhesion to the government.--Naturally, the great political recruiter singles out the tallest and most imposing subjects, that is to say, belonging to the first families of the ancient monarchy, and, like one who knows his business, he brings to bear every means, constraint and seduction, threats and cajoleries, supplies in ready money, promises of promotion with the influence of a uniform and gold-lace embroidery.[3137] It matters little whether the enlistment is voluntary or extorted; the moment a man becomes a functionary and is enrolled in the hierarchy, he loses the best portion of his independence; once a dignitary and placed at the top of the hierarchy, he gives his entire individuality up, for henceforth he lives under the eye of the master, feels the daily and direct pressure of the terrible hand which grasps him, and he forcibly becomes a mere tool.[3138] These historic names, moreover, contribute to the embellishment of the reign. Napoleon hauls in a good many of them, and the most ill.u.s.trious among the old n.o.blesse, of the court of the robe and of the sword. He can enumerate among his magistrates, M.

Pasquier, M. Seguier, M. Mole; among his prelates, M. de Boisgelin, M. du Barral, M. du Belley, M. de Roquelaure, M. de Broglie; among his military officers, M. de Fezensac, M. de Segur, M. de Mortemart, M.

de Narbonne;[3139] among the dignitaries of his palace, chaplains, chamberlains and ladies of honor--the Rohan, Croy, Chevreuse, Montmorency, Chabot, Montesquiou, Noailles, Brancas, Gontaut, Grammont, Beauvau, Saint-Aignan, Montalembert, Haussonville, Choiseul-Praslin, Mercy d'Argenteau, Aubusson de la Feuillade, and many others, recorded in the imperial almanac as formerly in the royal almanac.

But they are only with him nominally and in the almanac. Except certain individuals, M. de las Cases and M. Philippe de Segur, who gave themselves up body and soul, even to following him to Saint Helena, to glorifying, admiring and loving him beyond the grave, the others are submissive conscripts and who remain more or less refractory spirits. He does nothing to win them over. His court is not, like the old court, a conversational ball-room, but a hall of inspection, the most sumptuous apartment in his vast barracks; the civil parade is a continuation of the military parade; one finds one's self constrained, stiff, mute and uncomfortable.[3140]

He does not know how to entertain as the head of his household, how to welcome guests and be gracious or even polite to his pretended courtiers; he himself declares that[3141] "they go two years without speaking to him, and six months without seeing him; he does not like them, their conversation displeases him." When he addresses them it is to browbeat them; his familiarities with their wives are those of the gendarme or the pedagogue, while the little attentions he inflicts upon them are indecorous criticisms or compliments in bad taste. They know that they are spied upon in their own homes and responsible for whatever is said there; "the upper police is constantly hovering over all drawing-rooms."[3142] For every word uttered in privacy, for any lack of compliance, every individual, man or woman, runs the risk of exile or of being relegated to the interior at a distance of forty leagues.[3143]

And the same with the resident gentry in the provinces; they are obliged to pay court to the prefect, to be on good terms with him, or at least attend his receptions; it is important that their cards should be seen on his mantel piece.[3144] Otherwise, let them take heed, for it is he who reports on their conduct to the minister Fouche or to Savary who replaced him. In vain do they live circ.u.mspectly and confine themselves to a private life; a refusal to accept an office is unpardonable; there is a grudge against them if they do not employ their local influence in behalf of the reign.[3145] Accordingly, they are, under the empire as under the republic, in law as in fact, in the provinces as well as at Paris, privileged persons the wrong way, a suspicious cla.s.s under a special surveillance" and subject to exceptional rigor.[3146] In 1808,[3147] Napoleon orders Fouche "to draw up ... among the old and wealthy families who are not in the system... a list of ten in each department, and of fifty for Paris," of which the sons from sixteen to eighteen years of age shall be forced to enter Saint-Cyr and from thence go into the army as second lieutenants. In 1813, still "in the highest cla.s.ses of society," and arbitrarily selected by the prefects, he takes ten thousand other persons, exempt or redeemed from the conscription, even the married, even fathers of families, who, under the t.i.tle of guards of honor, become soldiers, at first to be slaughtered in his service, and next, and in the mean time, to answer for the fidelity of their relatives. It is the old law of hostages, a resumption of the worst proceedings of the Directory for his account and aggravated for his profit.--Decidedly, the imperial Regime, for the old royalists, resembles too much the Jacobin regime; they are about as repugnant to one as to the other, and their aversion naturally extends to the whole of the new society.--As they comprehend it, they are more or less robbed and oppressed for a quarter of a century. In order that their hostility may cease, the indemnity of 1825 is essential, fifty years of gradual adaptation, the slow elimination of two or three generations of fathers and the slow elimination of two or three generations of sons.

Nothing is so difficult as the reparation of great social wrongs.

In this case the incomplete reparation did not prove sufficient; the treatment which began with gentleness ended with violence, and, as a whole, the operation only half succeeded.

IV. Education and Medical Care.

Confiscation of collective fortunes.--Ruin of the Hospitals and Schools.

Other wounds are not less deep, and their cure is not less urgent; for they cause suffering, not only to one cla.s.s, but to the whole people--that vast majority which the government strives to satisfy.

Along with the property of the emigres, the Revolution has confiscated that of all local or special societies, ecclesiastic or laic, of churches and congregations, universities and academies, schools and colleges, asylums and hospitals, and even the property of the communes.

All these fortunes have been swallowed up by the public treasury, which is a bottomless pit, and are gone forever.--Consequently, all services thus maintained, especially charitable inst.i.tutions, public wors.h.i.+p and education, die or languish for lack of sustenance; the State, which has no money for itself, has none for them. And what is worse, it hinders private parties from taking them in charge; being Jacobin, that is to say intolerant and partisan, it has proscribed wors.h.i.+p, driven nuns out of the hospitals, closed Christian schools, and, with its vast power, it prevents others from carrying out at their own expense the social enterprises which it no longer cares for.

And yet the needs for which this work provides have never been so great nor so imperative. In ten years,[3148] the number of foundlings increased from 23,000 to 62,000; it is, as the reports state, a deluge: there are 1097 instead of 400 in Aisne, 1500 in Lot-et-Garonne, 2035 in la Manche, 2043 in Bouches-du-Rhone, 2673 in Calvados. From 3000 to 4000 beggars are enumerated in each department and about 300,000 in all France.[3149] As to the sick, the infirm, the mutilated, unable to earn their living, it suffices, for an idea of their mult.i.tude, to consider the regime to which the political doctors have just subjected France, the Regime of fasting and bloodletting. Two millions of Frenchmen have marched under the national flag, and eight hundred thousand have died under it;[3150] among the survivors, how many cripples, how many with one arm and with wooden legs! All Frenchmen have eaten dog-bread for three years and often have not had enough of that to live on; over a million have died of starvation and poverty; all the wealthy and well-to-do Frenchmen have been ruined and have lived in constant fear of the guillotine; four hundred thousand have wasted away in prisons; of the survivors, how many shattered const.i.tutions, how many bodies and brains disordered by an excess of suffering and anxiety, by physical and moral wear and tear![3151]

Now, in 1800, a.s.sistance is lacking for this crowd of civil and military invalids, the charitable establishments being no longer in a condition to furnish it. Under the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, through the suppression of ecclesiastical property and the abolition of octrois, a large portion of their revenue had been cut off, that a.s.signed to them out of octrois and the t.i.thes. Under the Legislative a.s.sembly and the Convention, through the dispersion and persecution of nuns and monks, they were deprived of a body of able male and female volunteer servants who, inst.i.tuted for centuries, gave their labor without stint. Under the Convention, all their possessions, the real-estate and the debts due them, had been confiscated;[3152] and, in the rest.i.tution to them of the remainder at the end of three years, a portion of their real-estate is found to have been sold, while their claims, settled by a.s.signats or converted into state securities, had died out or dwindled to such an extent that, in 1800, after the final bankruptcy of the a.s.signats and of the state debt, the ancient patrimony of the poor is two-thirds or one-half reduced.[3153] It is for this reason that the eight hundred charitable inst.i.tutions which, in 1789, had one hundred thousand or one hundred and ten thousand occupants, could not support more than one-third or one-half of them; on the other hand, it may be estimated that the number of applicants tripled; from which it follows that, in 1800, there is less than one bed in the hospitals and asylums for six children, either sick or infirm.

V. Old and New.

Complaints of the Poor, of Parents, and of Believers.

--Contrast between old and new educational facilities.

--Clandestine instruction.--Jacobin teachers.

Under this wail of the wretched who vainly appeal for help, for nursing and for beds, another moan is heard, not so loud, but more extensive, that of parents unable to educate their children, boys or girls, and give them any species of instruction either primary or secondary.

Previous to the Revolution "small schools" were innumerable: in Normandy, Picardy, Artois, French Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, in the Ile-de-France, in Burgundy and Franche-Comte, in the Dombes, Dauphiny and Lyonnais, in the Comtat, in the Cevennes and in Bearn,[3154] almost as many schools could be counted as there were parishes, in all probably twenty or twenty-five thousand for the thirty-seven thousand parishes in France, and all frequented and serviceable; for, in 1789, forty-seven men out of a hundred, and twenty-six girls or women out of a hundred, could read and write or, at least, sign their names.[3155]--And these schools cost the treasury nothing, next to nothing to the tax-payer, and very little to parents. In many places, the congregations, supported by their own property, furnished male or female teachers,--Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne, Freres de Saint-Antoine, Ursulines, Visitandines, Filles de la Charite, Saeurs de Saint-Charles, Saeurs de la Providence, Saeurs de la Sagesse, Saeurs de Notre-Dame de la Croix, Vatelottes, Miramiones, Manettes du Tiers Ordre, and many others. Elsewhere, the curate of the parish was obliged through a parish regulation to teach himself, or to see that his vicar taught. A very large number of factories or of communes had received legacies for maintaining a school; the instructor often enjoyed, through an endowment, a metayer farm or a piece of ground; he was generally provided with a lodging; if he was a layman he was exempt, besides, from the most onerous taxes; as s.e.xton, beadle, chorister or bell-ringer, he had small perquisites; finally, he was paid for each child four or five sous[3156] a month; sometimes, especially in poor districts, he taught only from All Saints' day down to the spring, and followed another occupation during the summer. In short, his salary and his comfort were about those of a rural vicar or of a suitably paid curate.

Higher education (education secondaire) was provided for in the same manner, and still better by local and private enterprise. More than one hundred and eight establishments furnished it completely, and more than four hundred and fifty-four partially.[3157] Like the others, and not less liberally than the smaller schools, these were supported by endowments, some of which were very ample and even magnificent; a certain upper school in the provinces, Rodez,[3158] possessed twenty-seven thousand livres income, and one in Paris, Louis-le-Grand, an income of four hundred and fifty thousand livres, each of these, large or small, having its own distinct endowment, in real property, lands and houses, and in revenues on privileges derived from the hotel-de-ville, the octroi and from transportation lines.--And, in each of them, the scholars.h.i.+ps, or half-scholars.h.i.+ps, were numerous-six hundred alone in Louis-le-Grand. In total, out of the seventy-two thousand scholars in the kingdom, there were forty thousand for whom a high-school education was gratuitous or half-gratuitous; nowadays, it is less than five thousand out of seventy-nine thousand.[3159] The reason why is that, before 1789, the revenues were not only large, but the expenses were small. The salary of a head-master, teacher, or a.s.sistant-teacher was not large, say four hundred and fifty, six hundred, nine hundred, or twelve hundred livres per annum at most, just enough for a single man to live on; in effect, most of the teachers were priests or monks, Benedictines, regular canons, Oratorians, the latter alone officiating in thirty colleges. Not subject to the expenses and necessities which a family imposes, they were abstemious through piety, or at least through discipline, habit, and respect for persons; frequently, the statutes of the school obliged them to live in common,[3160] which was much cheaper than living apart.--The same economical accord is found with all the wheels, in the arrangement and working of the entire system. A family, even a rural one, never lived far away from a high-school, for there were high-schools in nearly all the small towns, seven or eight in each department, fifteen in Ain, seventeen in Aisne.[3161] The child or youth, from eight to eighteen, had not to endure the solitude and promiscuity of a civil barracks; he remained within reach of his parents. If they were too poor to pay the three hundred francs board required by the school, they placed their son in a respectable family, in that of some artisan or acquaintance in the town; there, with three or four others, he was lodged, had his was.h.i.+ng done, was cared for and watched, had a seat at the family table and by the fireside, and was provided with light; every week, he received from the country his supply of bread and other provisions; the mistress of the house cooked for him and mended his clothes, the whole for two or three livres a month.[3162]--Thus do inst.i.tutions flourish that arise spontaneously on the spot; they adapt themselves to circ.u.mstances, conform to necessities, utilize resources and afford the maximum of returns for the minimum of expense.

This great organization disappears entirely, bodily and with all its possessions, like a s.h.i.+p that sinks beneath the waves. The teachers are dismissed, exiled, transported, and proscribed; its property is confiscated, sold and destroyed, and the remainder in the hands of the State is not restored and again applied to its former service. Public education, worse treated than public charity, does not recover a shred of its former endowment. Consequently, in the last years of the Directory, and even early in the Consulate,[3163] there is scarcely any instruction given in France; in fact, for the past eight or nine years it has ceased,[3164] or become private and clandestine. Here and there, a few returned priests, in spite of the intolerant law and with the connivance of the local authorities, also a few scattered nuns, teach in a contraband fas.h.i.+on a few small groups of Catholic children; five or six little girls around a disguised Ursuline nun spell out the alphabet in a back room;[3165] a priest without tonsure or ca.s.sock secretly receives in the evening two or three youths whom he makes translate the De Viris.--During the intervals, indeed, of the Reign of Terror, before the 13th of Vendemiaire and the 18th of Fructidor, sundry schools spring up again like tufts of gra.s.s in a mowed pasture-ground, but only in certain spots and meagerly; moreover, as soon as the Jacobin returns to power he stubbornly stamps them out;[3166] he wants to have teaching all to himself.--Now the inst.i.tution by which the State pretends to replace the old and free establishments makes a figure only on paper. One ecole centrale in each department is installed or decreed, making eighty eight on the territory of ancient France; this hardly supplies the place of the eight or nine hundred high-schools (colleges), especially as these new schools are hardly viable, being in ruin at the very start,[3167]

poorly maintained, badly furnished, with no preparatory schools nor adjacent boarding-houses,[3168] the programme of studies being badly arranged and parents suspicious of the spirit of the studies.[3169]