ploughshares; you say, "this is a necessary man;" you salute these men,
these skilful labourers. You enter the house of a schoolmaster,--salute
him more profoundly; do you know what he is doing? he is manufacturing
minds.

He is the wheelwright, the weaver, and the blacksmith of the work, in
which he is aiding God,--the future.

Well! to-day, thanks to the reigning clerical party, as the
schoolmaster must not be allowed to work for this future, as this
future is to consist of darkness and degradation, not of intelligence
and light,--do you wish to know in what manner this humble and great
magistrate, the schoolmaster, is made to do his work? The schoolmaster
serves mass, sings in the choir, rings the vesper bell, arranges the
seats, renews the flowers before the sacred heart, furbishes the altar
candlesticks, dusts the tabernacle, folds the copes and the chasubles,
counts and keeps in order the linen of the sacristy, puts oil in the
lamps, beats the cushion of the confessional, sweeps out the church,
and sometimes the rectory; the remainder of his time, on condition that
he does not pronounce either of those three words of the devil,
Country, Republic, Liberty, he may employ, if he thinks proper, in
teaching little children to say their A, B, C.

M. Bonaparte strikes at instruction at the same moment above and below:
below, to please the priests, above, to please the bishops. At the same
time that he is trying to close the village school, he mutilates the
College de France. He overturns with one blow the professors' chairs of
Quinet and of Michelet. One fine morning, he declares, by decree, Greek
and Latin to be under suspicion, and, so far as he can, forbids all
intercourse with the ancient poets and historians of Athens and of
Rome, scenting in AEschylus and in Tacitus a vague odour of demagogy.
With a stroke of the pen, for instance, he exempts all medical men from
literary qualification, which causes Doctor Serres to say: "_We are
dispensed, by decree, from knowing how to read and write._"

New taxes, sumptuary taxes, vestiary taxes; _nemo audeat comedere
praeter duo fercula cum potagio_; tax on the living, tax on the
dead, tax on successions, tax on carriages, tax on paper. "Bravo!"
shouts the beadle party, "fewer books; tax upon dogs, the collars will
pay; tax upon senators, the armorial bearings will pay."--"All this
will make me popular!" says M. Bonaparte, rubbing his hands. "He is the
socialist Emperor," v