599. Fourcroy[255] and the Law of 1802.—We have not the space to dwell long on the bill of Fourcroy, which became the law of 1802, although this measure, it has been said, was amended twenty-three times before being submitted to the Corps Législatif and to the Tribunate.
Fourcroy did not sufficiently recognize the rights of the State. Doubtless he did not go so far as to assert, with Adam Smith, that education should be abandoned entirely to private enterprise; but he thinks that the task of organizing the primary schools must be left to the communes. In his opinion, that which prevented the success of these schools was the attempt to impose too great a uniformity on them. He demands that the teachers be chosen by the mayors, or by the municipal councillors, who alone are cognizant of the local interests. The primary school is the need of all. Then let it be the affair of all. Fourcroy was mistaken. Primary instruction became a reality in France only on the day when the State vigorously put its hand on it.
On certain points, however, the law of 1802 prepared the way for the approaching creation of Napoleon; for example, in giving to the First Consul the appointment of the professors of the colleges, and in placing the primary schools under the supervision of the prefects.
600. Foundation of the University (1806).—The law of May 11, 1806, completed by the decrees of March 17, 1808, and of 1811, established the University, that is, a teaching corporation, unique and entirely dependent on the State:—
“There shall be constituted a body charged exclusively with instruction and public education throughout the whole extent of the Empire.”
Instruction thus became a function of the State, on the same basis as the administration of justice or the organization of the army.
At the same time that it lost all autonomy, all independence, the University gained the formidable privilege of being alone charged with the national instruction.
“No one can open a school or teach publicly, without being a member of the Imperial University and without having been graduated from one of its Faculties.” “No school can be established outside of the University, and without the authorization of its head.”
We know what protestations were excited, even on the start, by the establishment of this University monopoly. “It was not enough to enchain parents; it was still necessary to dispose of the children. Mothers have been seen hastening from the extremities of the Empire, coming to reclaim, in an agony of tears, the sons whom the government had carried off from them.” Thus spoke Chateaubriand, before lavishing his adulations on the restorer of altars, and he added, with an extravagance of imagination which recoils on itself, “Children were placed in schools where they were taught at the sound of the drum, irreligion, debauchery, and contempt for the domestic virtues!” Joseph de Maistre was more just: “Fontanes,”[256] he said, “has large views and excellent intentions. The plan of his University is grand and comprehensive. It is a noble body. The soul will come to it when it can. Celibacy, subordination, devotion of the whole life without religious motive, are required. Will they be obtained?”[257]