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
classes 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 title 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 class, 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 institutions, public worship and