reedom of
education was to have been expected from an assembly itself enslaved by
an oligarchy of rogues and assassins. And this law left nothing standing
in France to impede the execution of the Imperial decree of 1808, the
first article of which was:--'Public education in the whole Empire is
exclusively confided to the University.' Another article ordained that
all the schools in France should take as the basis of their instruction
'fidelity to the Emperor, to the Imperial monarchy, the trustee of the
happiness of the people, and to the Napoleonic dynasty, the conservator
of the unity of France and of all the liberal ideas proclaimed in the
constitutions of France.' The theology of all the French schools was to
be in conformity with the Royal edict of Louis XIV., issued in 1682.
Furthermore and expressly, 'the members of the University were required
to keep the Grand-master and his officers informed of anything that may
come to their knowledge contrary to the doctrine and the principles of
the educational body in the establishments of public education!'

Here we have the 'moral unity' of France organized by Napoleon in 1808
on the lines in which the Third Republic has been trying ever since 1874
to organize it! Put the word 'Republic' for the word 'Empire,' the
phrase 'scientific atheism' for the phrase 'propositions of the clergy
of France in 1682,' and you have in the Napoleonic organization of
public education the organization controlled by M. Jules Ferry. Of the
two despotisms, the despotism of 1808 seems to me the more compatible
with public order and public prosperity. With public liberty neither of
them is compatible. Under the ancient Monarchy and the clerical system
of education liberty existed. The Jesuits and the Jansenists, the
Dominicans and the Oratorians and the Benedictines, had their different
principles of education, their different traditions, their different
text-books. Under the Imperial University, and still more under the
University of the Third Republic, differences became disloyalties. Under
the University of France in 1808 every young French citizen was to
accept the Catholic faith as defined by the clergy of France in 1682,
and true allegiance bear to the Napoleonic dynasty. Under the University
of France in 1890, every young French citizen is to disbelieve in God
and a future life, and true allegiance bear to the Third French
Republic.

In 1808 as in 1890 the rights of freemen were first v