ve a
diploma and I shall take care to replace him with another man whom you
may judge to be the most capable."[6208]

If Napoleon thus places his small schools under ecclesiastical
oversight, it is not merely to conciliate the clergy by giving it the
lead of the majority of souls, all the uncultivated souls, but because,
for his own interests, he does not want the mass of the people to think
and reason too much for themselves.

"The Academy inspectors,"[6209] says the decree of 1811, "will see that
the masters of the primary schools do not carry their teaching beyond
reading, writing and arithmetic."

Beyond this limit, should the instructor teach a few of the children the
first elements of Latin or geometry, geography or history, his school
becomes secondary; it is then ranked as a boarding-school, while its
pupils are subjected to the university recompense, military drill,
uniform, and all the above specified exigencies; and yet more--it must
no longer exist and is officially closed. A peasant who reads, writes
and ciphers and who remains a peasant need know no more, and, to be a
good soldier, he need not know as much; moreover, that is enough, and
more too, to enable him to become an under and even a superior officer.
Take, for instance, Captain Coignet, whose memoirs we have, who, to be
appointed a second-lieutenant, had to learn to write and who could never
write other than a large hand, like young beginners.--The best masters
for such limited instruction are the Brethren of the Christian Schools
and these, against the advice of his counselors, Napoleon supports:

"If they are obliged," he says, by their vows to refrain from other
knowledge than reading, writing and the elements of arithmetic,... it is
that they may be better adapted to their destiny."[6210] "In comprising
them in the University, they become connected with the civil order of
things and the danger of their independence is anticipated."

Henceforth, "they no longer have a stranger or a foreigner for their
chief." "The superior-general at Rome has renounced all inspection over
them; it is understood that in France their superior-general will reside
at Lyons."[6211] The latter, with his monks, fall into the hands of
the government and come under the authority of the Grand-Master. Such
a corporation, with the head of it in one's power, is a perfect
instrument, the surest, the most exact, always to be relied on and which
never acts on one side of, o