indicated in this
connection by the Catholic Church. On April 9, 1809, the Emperor issued
a decree that no one should be admitted to a Catholic theological
academy without a bachelor's diploma of the University. The bishops came
at once into collision on this point with the Imperial prefects of 1809,
as the bishops now came into collision on the decree of 1880 with M.
Jules Ferry and the Republican prefects. The Imperial prefects of 1809
(not a few of them rabid Republicans in 1792) were merely the valets of
the Emperor, as the prefects of 1890 are the valets of a Parliamentary
oligarchy.

The Emperor carried his point. But when the Emperor fell, and the
constitutional monarchy was restored, the University of France ceased to
be an Imperialist training-school. M. de Fontanes, appointed
grand-master by the Emperor in 1809, kept his place under Louis XVIII.
To keep it he made the University 'clerical.' Under Napoleon the
scholars in the public schools of France had been divided into
'companies.' M. de Fontanes in 1815 ordered them to be divided into
'classes.' Under Napoleon the hours of study and of play were announced
by a drum. In 1815 M. de Fontanes ordered them to be announced by a
bell. Under Napoleon the boys all wore a uniform. M. de Fontanes in 1815
ordered the uniforms to be no longer of 'a military type.' Then the
French Liberals who had not dared to stir under the Emperor began to
attack both the clergy and the University. But when the Revolution of
1830 brought these 'Liberals' into power, they ceased at once to attack,
and began at once to engineer the Imperial machinery of the University.
M. Thiers even proclaimed this machinery to be 'the finest creation of
the reign of Napoleon!'

In 1833 the truest Liberal of them all, M. Guizot, struck a strenuous
blow at this machinery of despotism. He could not deal with the
University as a system, but he framed a law affecting 'primary
education,' the principle of winch was that no man should be forced to
send his child to school, but that schools should exist all over France
to which any man who pleased might send his children if he was too poor
to pay for their education.

This principle of M. Guizot in 1883 was certainly not an outcome of the
'principles of 1789;' for it had been at the foundation of all the free
schools of France during the middle ages, and under the absolute
monarchy of Louis XIV. Talleyrand recognised it in his plan of 1791,
which did not s