France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
To this end, we, the dominant party, use our legal rights. In the place
of bad wheels we put good ones. We purify our staff. We do not appoint
or leave in place any but safe men. At the end of six years, nearly
all the rectors, proviseurs and professors of philosophy, many other
professors and a number of the censors,[6309] are all priests. At the
Sorbonne, M. Cousin has been silenced and M. Guizot replaced by M.
Durosoir. At the Collège de France we have dismissed Tissot and we do
not accept M. Magendie. We "suppress" in block the Faculty of Medicine
in order that, on reorganizing it, our hands may be free and eleven
professors with bad notes be got rid of, among others Pinel, Dubois, de
Jussieu, Desgenettes, Pelletan and Vauquelin. We suppress another center
of insalubrities, the upper École Normale, and, for the recruitment of
our educational body, we institute[6310] at the principal seat of each
academy a sort of university novitiate where the pupils, few in number,
expressly selected, prepared from their infancy, will imbibe deeper
and more firmly retain the sound doctrines suitable to their future
condition.
We let the small seminaries multiply and fill up until they comprise
50,000 pupils. It is the bishop who founds them; no educator or
inspector of education is so worthy of confidence. Therefore, we confer
upon him "in all that concerns religion,"[6311] the duty "of visiting
them himself, or delegating his vicars-general to visit them," the
faculty "of suggesting to the royal council of public instruction the
measures which he deems necessary." At the top of the hierarchy sits
a Grand-Master with the powers and title of M. de Fontanes and with
an additional title, member of the cabinet and minister of public
instruction, M. de Freyssinous, bishop of Hermopolis,[6312] and, in
difficult cases, this bishop, placed between his Catholic conscience and
the positive articles of the legal statute, "sacrifices the law" to his
conscience.[6313]--This is the advantage which can be taken from the
tool of public education. After 1850, it is to be used in the same way
and in the same sense; after 1796, and later after 1875, it was made to
work as vigorously in the opposite direction. Whatever the rulers may
be, whether monarchists, imperialists or republicans, they are the
masters who use it for their own advantage; for this reason, even when
resolved not to abuse the instrument, they keep it intact; they reserve
the use of it for themselves,[6314] and pretty hard blows are necessary
to sever or relax the firm hold which they have on the central lever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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