The day after the 24th of February 1848,6328 M. Cousin, meeting M. de Remusat on the quay Voltaire, raised his arms towards heaven and exclaimed:

"Let us hurry and fall on our knees in front of the bishops—they alone can save us now!"

While M. Thiers, with equal vivacity, in the parliamentary committee exclaimed: "Cousin, Cousin, do you comprehend the lesson we have received? AbbÉ Dupanloup is right."6329 Hence the new law.6330 M. Beugnot, who presented it, clearly explains its aims and object: the Government "must assemble the moral forces of the country and unite them with each other to combat with and overthrow the common enemy," the anti-social party, "which, victorious, would have no mercy on anybody," neither on the University nor on the Church. Consequently, the University abandons its monopoly: the State is no longer the sole purveyor of public instruction; private schools and associations may teach as they please. The government will no longer inspect their "education," but only "morality, hygiene, and salubrity;"6331—they are out of its jurisdiction and exempt from its taxes. Therefore, the government establishments and free establishments will no longer be dangerous adversaries, but "useful co-operators;" they will owe and give to each other "good advice and good examples;" it will maintain for both "an equal interest;" henceforth, its University "will be merely an institution supported by it to quicken competition and make this bear good fruit," and, to this end, it comes to an understanding with its principal competitor, the Church.

But in this coalition of the two powers it is the Church which has the best of it, takes the upper hand and points out the way. For, not only does she profit by the liberty decreed, and profit by it almost alone, founding in twenty years afterwards nearly one hundred ecclesiastical colleges and putting the Ignorantin brethren everywhere in the primary schools; but, again, by virtue of the law,6332 she places four bishops or archbishops in the superior council of the University; by virtue of the law, she puts into each departmental academic council the bishop of the diocese and a priest selected by him; moreover, through her credit with the central government she enjoys all the administrative favors. In short, from above and close at hand, she leads, keeps in check, and governs the lay University and, from 1849 to 1859, the priestly domination and interference, the bickering, the repressions, the dismissals,6333 the cases of disgrace, are a revival of the system which, from 1821 to 1828, had already been severe. As under the Restoration, the Church had joined hands with the State to administrate the school-machine in concert with it; but, under the Restoration, she reserves to herself the upper hand, and it is she who works the machine rather than the State. In sum, under the name, the show, and the theoretical proclamation of liberty for all, the University monopoly is reorganized, if not by law, at least in fact, and in favor of the Church.

Towards 1859, and after the war in Italy, regarding the Pope and the temporal power, the hands which were joined now let go and then separate; there is a dissolution of partnership; their interests cease to agree. Two words are coined, both predestined to great fortune, on the one side the "secular" interest and on the other side the "clerical" interest; henceforth, the government no longer subordinates the former to the latter and, under the ministry of M. Duruy, the direction of the University becomes frankly secular. Consequently, the entire educational system, in gross and in its principal features, is to resemble, until 1876, that of the of July.6334 For sixteen years, the two great teaching powers, the spiritual and the temporal, unable to do better, are to support each other but act apart, each on its own ground and each in its own way; only the Church no longer acts through the toleration and gracious permission of the University, but through the legal abolition of the monopoly and by virtue of a written law. The whole composes a passable rÉgime, less oppressive than those that preceded it; in any event, the two millions of devout Catholics who consider unbelief as a terrible evil, the fathers and mothers who subordinate instruction to education,6335 and desire above all things to preserve the faith of their children up to adult age, now find in the ecclesiastical establishments well-run hothouses and protected against draughts of modernity. One urgent need of the first order,6336 legitimate, deeply felt by many men and especially by women, has received satisfaction; parents who do not experience this want, place their children in the lycÉes; in 1865, in the smaller seminaries and other ecclesiastical schools there are 54,000 pupils and in the State colleges and lycÉes 64,000,6337 which two bodies balance each other.

But even that is a danger. For, naturally, the teaching State finds with regret that its clients diminish; it does not view the rival favorably which takes away so many of its pupils. Naturally also, in case of an electoral struggle, the Church favors the party which favors it, the effect of which is to expose it to ill-will and, in case of political defeat, to hostilities. Now, the chances are, that, should hostile rulers, in this case, attempt to strike it in its most vulnerable point, that of teaching, they might set aside liberty, and even toleration, and adopt the school machine of Napoleon in order to restore it as best they could, enlarge it, derive from it for their own profit and against the Church, whatever could be got out of it, to use with all their power according to the principles and intentions of the Convention and the Directory. Thus, the compromise accepted by Church and State is simply a provisional truce; to-morrow, this truce will be broken; the fatal French prejudice which erects the State into a national educator is ever present; after a partial and brief slackening of its energy, it will try to recover its ascendancy and recommence its ravages.—And, on the other hand, even under this rÉgime, more liberal than its predecessor, real liberty is much restricted; instead of one monopoly, there are two. Between two kinds of establishments, one secular, resembling a barracks, and the other ecclesiastical, resembling a seminary or convent, parents may choose and that is all. Ordinarily, if they prefer one, it is not because they consider it good, but because, in their opinion, the other is worse, while there is no third one at hand, built after a different type, with its own independent and special character, adapting itself to their tastes and accommodating itself to their necessities.

In the early years of the century there were thousands of secondary schools of every kind and degree, everywhere born or reborn, spontaneous, local, raised up through the mutual understanding of parents and masters, and, consequently, subject to this understanding, diverse, flexible, dependent on the law of supply and demand, competitive, each careful to keep its own patrons, each compelled, like every other private enterprise, to adjust its working to the views and faculties of its clients. It is very probable that, if these had been allowed to exist, if the new legislator had not been radically hostile to permanent corporations, endowments, and mortmain titles; if, through the jealous intervention of his Council of State and the enormous levies of his fiscal system, the government had not discouraged free associations and the free donations to which they might have been entitled, the best of these secondary schools would have survived: those which might have been able to adapt themselves to their surroundings would have had the most vitality; according to a well-known law, they would have prospered in branching off, each in its own sense and in its own way.—Now, at this date, after the demolitions of the Revolution, all pedagogic roads were open and, at each of their starting-points, the runners were ready, not merely the secular but, again, independent ecclesiastics, liberal Gallicans, surviving Jansenists, constitutional priests, enlightened monks, some of them philosophers and half-secular in mind or even at heart, using Port-Royal manuals, Rollin's "TraitÉ des Études" and Condillac's "Cours d'Etudes," the best-tried and most fecund methods of instruction, all the traditions of the seventeenth century from Arnauld to Lancelot and all the novelties of the eighteenth century from Locke to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, all wide-awake or aroused by the demands of the public and by this unique opportunity and eager to do and to do well. In the provinces6338 as at Paris, people were seeking, trying and groping. There was room and encouragement for original, sporadic and multiple invention, for schools proportionate with and suited to various and changing necessities, Latin, mathematical or mixed schools, some for theoretical science and others for practical apprenticeship, these commercial and those industrial, from the lowest standpoint of technical and rapid preparation up to the loftiest summits of speculative and prolonged study.

On this school world in the way of formation, Napoleon has riveted his uniformity, the rigorous apparatus of his university, his unique system, narrow, inflexible, applied from above. We have seen with what restrictions, with what insistence, with what convergence of means, what prohibitions, what taxes, what application of the university monopoly, and with what systematic hostility to private establishments!—In the towns, and by force, they become branches of the lycÉe and imitate its classes; in this way Sainte-Barbe is allowed to subsist at Paris and, until the abolition of the monopoly, the principal establishments of Paris, Massin, Jauffrey, Bellaguet, existed only on this condition, that of becoming auxiliaries, subordinates and innkeepers for lycÉe day-scholars; such is still the case to-day for the lycÉes Bossuet and Gerson. In the way of education and instruction the little that an institution thus reduced can preserve of originality and of pedagogic virtue is of no account.—In the country, the Oratoriens who have repurchased Juilly are obliged,6339 in order to establish a free and durable school of "Christian and national education," to turn aside the civil law which interdicts trusts and organize themselves into a "Tontine Society" and thus present their disinterested enterprise in the light of an industrial and commercial speculation, that of a lucrative and well-attended boarding school. Still at the present day similar fictions have to be resorted to for the establishment and duration of like enterprises.6340

Naturally, under this prohibitive rÉgime, private establishments are born with difficulty; and afterwards, absorbed, mutilated and strangled, they find no less difficulty in keeping alive and thus degenerate, decline and succumb one by one. And yet, in 1815, not counting the 41 small seminaries with their 5000 scholars, there still remained 1,225 private schools, with 39,000 scholars, confronting the 36 lycÉes and 368 communal colleges which, together, had only 37,000 scholars. Of these 1,255 private schools there are only 825 in 1854, 622 in 1865, 494 in 1876, and, finally, in 1887, 302 with 20,174 scholars; on the other hand, the State establishments have 89,000 schools, and those of the Church amount to 73,000. It is only after 1850 that the decadence of secular and private institutions is precipitated; in effect, instead of one competitor, they have two, the second as formidable as the first one, both enjoying unlimited credit, possessors of immense capital and determined to spend money without calculation, the State, on one side abstracting millions from the pockets of the taxpayers and, on the other side, the Church deriving its millions from the purses of the faithful: the struggle between isolated individuals and these two great organized powers who give instruction at a discount or gratis is too unequal.6341

Such is the actual and final effect of the first Napoleonic monopoly: the enterprise of the State has, by a counter-stroke, incited the enterprise of the clergy; both now complete the ruin of the others, private, different in kind and independent, which, supported wholly by family approbation, have no other object in view than to render families content. On the contrary, along with this purpose, the two survivors have another object, each its own, a superior and doctrinal object, due to its own particular interest and antagonism to the opposite interest; it is in view of this object, in view of a political or religious purpose, that each in its own domicile directs education and instruction like Napoleon, each inculcates on, or insinuates into, young minds its social and moral opinions which are clear-cut and become cutting. Now, the majority of parents, who prefer peace to war, desire that their children should entertain moderate and not bellicose opinions. They would like to see them respectful and intelligent, and nothing more. But neither of the two rival institutions thus limits itself; each works beyond and aside,6342 and when the father, at the end of July,6343 goes for his son at the ecclesiastical college or secular institution, he risks finding in the young man of seventeen the militant prejudices, the hasty and violent conclusions and the uncompromising rigidity of either a "laÏcisant" or a "clÉrical."