The ecclesiastical party detested theEncyclopaedia, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophical enemies. To any one who turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it seems surprising that their doctrine should have stirred such portentous alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the cardinal mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the notorious abuses of the Church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet learnt to encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. TheEncyclopaediatakes for granted the justice of religious toleration and speculative freedom. It asserts in distinct tones the democratic doctrine that it is the common people in a nation whose lot ought to be the chief concern of the nation's government. From beginning to end it is one unbroken process of exaltation of scientific knowledge on the one hand, and pacific industry on the other. All these things were odious to the old governing classes of France. [15]
Rousseau.The fifth reform writer mentioned as exercising a large influence was Rousseau. In 1749 the Academy at Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the subject:Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals?Rousseau took the negative side and won the prize. His essay attracted widespread attention. In 1753 he competed for a second prize onThe Origin of Inequality among Men, in which he took the same negative attitude. In 1762 appeared both hisSocial ContractandÉmile. In the former he contended that early men had given to selected leaders the right to conduct their government for them, and that these had in time become autocratic and had virtually enslaved the people (R. 249 a). He held that men were not bound to submit to government against their wills, and to remedy existing abuses he advocated the overthrow of the usurping government and the establishment of a republic, with universal suffrage based on "liberty, fraternity, and equality." The ideal State lay in a society controlled by the people, where artificiality and aristocracy and the tyranny of society over man did not exist. Nor could Rousseau distinguish between political and ecclesiastical tyranny, holding that the former inevitably followed from the latter (R. 249 b).
Crude as were his theories, and impractical as were many of his ideas, to an age tired of absurdities and pretensions and injustice, and suffering deeply from the abuses of both Church and State, his attractively written book seemed almost inspired. TheSocial Contractvirtually became the Bible of the French Revolutionists. In theÉmile, a book which will be referred to more at length in chapter XXI, Rousseau held that we should revert, in education, to a state of nature to secure the needed educational reforms, and that education to prepare for life in the existing society was both wrong and useless.
A REVOLUTION IN FRENCH THINKING. These five men—Montesquieu, Turgot, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau—and many other less influential followers, portrayed the abuses of the time in Church and State and pointed out the lines of political and ecclesiastical reform. Those who read their writings understood better why the existing privileges of the nobility and clergy were no longer right, and the need for reform in matters of taxation and government. Their writings added to the spirit of unrest of the century, and were deeply influential, not only in France, but in the American Colonies as well. Though the attack was at first against the evils in Church and State, the new critical philosophy soon led to intellectual developments of importance in many other directions.
At the death of Louis XIV (1715) France was intellectually prostrate. Great as was his long reign from the point of view of the splendor of his court, and large as was the quantity of literature produced, his age was nevertheless an age of misery, religious intolerance, political oppression, and intellectual decline. It was a reign of centralized and highly personal government. Men no longer dared to think for themselves, or to discuss with any freedom questions either of politics or religion. "There was no popular liberty; there were no great men; there was no science; there was no literature; there were no arts. The largest intellects lost their energy; the national spirit died away." Between the death of Louis XIV and the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) an intellectual revolution took place in France, and for this revolution English political progress and political and scientific thinking were largely responsible.
GREAT ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON FRANCE. In 1715 the English language was almost unspoken in France, English science and political progress were unknown there, and the English were looked down upon and hated. Half a century later English was spoken everywhere by the scholars of the time; the English were looked upon as the political and scientific leaders of Europe; and the scholars of France visited England to study English political, economic, and scientific progress. Locke, an uncompromising advocate of political and religious liberty; Hobbes, the speculative moral philosopher; and the great scientist Newton were the teachers of Voltaire. More than any other single man, Voltaire moulded and redirected eighteenth-century thought in France. [16] Numerous French writers of importance—Helvetius, Diderot, Morellet, Voltaire, Rousseau, to mention but a few—drew their inspiration from English writers. In the eighteenth century England became the school for political liberty for France. [17]
The effect of the work of Isaac Newton (p. 388), as popularized by the writings of Voltaire, was revolutionary on a people who had been so tyrannized over by the clergy as had the French during the reign of Louis XIV. An interest in scientific studies before unknown in France now flamed up, and a new generation of French scientists arose. Physics, chemistry, zoölogy, and anatomy received a great new impetus, while botany, geology, and mineralogy were raised to the rank of sciences. Popular scientific lectures became very common. The classics were almost abandoned for the new studies.
Economic questions now also began to be discussed, such as questions of money, food, finance, and government expenditure. In 1776 the Englishman, Adam Smith, laid the foundations of the new science of political economy by the publication of hisWealth of Nations, and this was at once translated into French and eagerly read. In 1781 a French banker by the name of Necker published hisCompte Rendu, a statistical report on the finances of France. So feverishly eager were men to study problems of government that six thousand copies were sold the day it was published, and eighty thousand had to be printed before the demand for it was satisfied. A half-century earlier it would have been read scarcely at all.
In the meantime taxes piled up, reforms were refused, the power and arrogance of the clergy and nobility showed no signs of diminution, the nation was burdened with debt, commerce and agriculture declined, the lot of the common people became ever more hard to bear, and the masses grew increasingly resentful and rebellious. As national affairs continued to drift from bad to worse in France, a series of important happenings on the American continent helped to bring matters more rapidly to a crisis. Before describing these events, however, we wish to sketch briefly the rise of government by the people and the extension of liberalism in England—the first great democratic nation of the western world.
EARLY BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. The first western nation created from the wreck of the Roman Empire to achieve a measurement of self-government was England. Better civilized than most of the other wandering tribes, at the time of their coming to English shores, the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes early accepted Christianity (p. 120) and settled down to an agricultural life. On English shores they soon built up a for-the-time substantial civilization. This was later largely destroyed by the pillaging Danes, but with characteristic energy the English set to work to assimilate the newcomers and build up civilization anew. The work of Alfred (p. 146) in reëstablishing law and order, at a time when law and order scarcely existed anywhere in western Europe, will long remain famous. Later on, and at a time when German and Hun and Slav had only recently accepted Christianity in name and had begun to settle down into rude tribal governments, and when the Prussians in their original home along the eastern Baltic were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen gods (p. 120), the English barons were extortingMagna Chartafrom King John and laying the firm foundations of English constitutional liberty. In the meadow at Runnymede, on that justly celebrated June day, in 1215, government under law and based on the consent of the governed began to shape itself once more in the western world. Of the sixty-three articles of this Charter of Liberties, three possess imperishable value. These provided:
1. That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers, or the law of the land, which secured trial by jury.
2. That justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.
3. That dues from the people to the king could be imposed only with the consent of the National Council (after 1246 known as Parliament).
So important was this charter to such a liberty-loving people as the English have always been, and so bitterly did kings resent its hampering provisions, that within the next two centuries kings had been forced to confirm it no less than thirty-seven times.
By 1295 the first complete Parliament, representative of the three orders of society—Lords, Clergy, and Commons—assembled, and in 1333 the Commons gained the right to sit by itself. From that time to the present the Commons, representing the people, has gradually broadened its powers, working, as Tennyson has said, [18] "from precedent to precedent," until to-day it rules the English nation. In 1376 the Commons gained the right to impeach the King's ministers, and in 1407 the exclusive right to make grants of money for any governmental purpose. Centuries ahead of other nations, this insured an almost continual meeting of the national assembly and a close scrutiny of the acts of both kings and ministers.
In 1604 King James I, imitating continental European precedents, proclaimed his theory as to the "divine right of kings" to rule, [19] and a struggle at once set in which carried the English into Civil War (1642- 49); led to the beheading of Charles I (1649); the overthrow and banishment of James II (1688); and the ultimate firm establishment, instead, of the "divine right of the common people." [20] In an age when the autocratic power and the divine right of kings to rule was almost unquestioned elsewhere in Europe, the English people compelled their king to recognize that he could rule over them only when he ruled in their interests and as they wished him to do. Though there was a period of struggle later on with the German Georges (I, II, and III), and especially with the honest but stupid George III, England has, since 1688, been a government of and by the people. [21] France did not rid itself of the "divine-right" conception until the French Revolution (1789), and Germany, Austria, and Russia not until 1918.
GROWTH OF TOLERANCE AMONG THE ENGLISH. The results of the long struggle of the English for liberty under law showed itself in many ways in the growth of tolerance among the people of the English nation. At a time when other nations were bound down in blind obedience to king and priest, and when dissenting minorities were driven from the land, the English people had become accustomed to the idea of individual liberty, regulated by law, and to the toleration of opinions with which they did not agree. These characteristically English conceptions of liberty under law and of the toleration of minorities have found expression in many important ways in the life and government of the people (R. 250), and have been elements of great strength in England's colonial policy. One of the important ways in which this growth of tolerance among the English showed itself was in the extension of a larger freedom to those unable to subscribe to the state religion.
Though the Reformation movement had stirred up bitter hatreds in England, as on the Continent, the English were among the first of European peoples to show tolerance of opposition in religious matters. The high English State Church, which had succeeded the Roman, had made but small appeal to many Englishmen. The Puritans had early struggled to secure a simplification of the church service and the introduction of more preaching (p. 359), and in the seventeenth century the organization of three additional dissenting sects, which became known as Unitarians, Baptists, and Quakers, took place. These sects divided off rather quietly, and their separation resulted only in the enactment of new laws regarding conformity, prayers, and teaching.
During the latter half of the seventeenth century, after the execution of Charles I (1649), the Puritans had temporarily risen to power, and during their control of affairs had imposed their strict Calvinistic standards as to Sabbath observance and piety on the nation. This was very distasteful to many, and from such strict observances the people in time rebelled. The standards of the English in personal morality, temperance, amusements, and manners at the beginning of the eighteenth century were not especially high, and in the reaction from Puritan control and strict religious observances the great mass of the people degenerated into positive irreligion and gross immorality. Drunkenness, rowdyism, robbery, blasphemy, brutality, lewdness, and prostitution became very common. This moral decline of the people the Church of England seemed powerless to arrest.
[Illustration: FIG. 151. JOHN WESLEY (1707-82)Founder of Methodism.]
About 1730 a reform movement was begun under the able leadership of a young Oxford student by the name of John Wesley, ably seconded by George Whitefield (1714-70), with a view to reaching the classes so completely untouched by the high State Church. By traveling over the country and preaching a gospel of repentance, personal faith, and better living, these two young men made a deep emotional appeal, and soon gained a strong hold on the poorer and more ignorant classes of the people. Forbidden to preach in Anglican churches, and at times threatened with personal violence, these two men were in time forced into open rebellion against the Established Church. Finally they founded a new Church, which became known as the Methodist. [22] This new organization bore the same relation to the Church of England that the Anglican Church two hundred years before had borne to the Church of Rome. Thus was accomplished a second spiritual reformation in England, and one destined in time to spread to the colonies and deeply affect the lives of a large portion of the English people. [23] That such a well-organized sect could arise, such a moral reformation be preached, and the power of the Established Church be challenged so openly and without serious persecution, speaks much for the growth of religious tolerance among the English people since the days of the great Elizabeth. In 1778 the Roman Catholic Relief Act was adopted, and in 1779 dissenting ministers and schoolmasters were relieved from the disabilities under which they had so long remained. These acts indicate a further marked growth in religious tolerance on the part of the English nation. [24]
NEW EMANCIPATING AND EDUCATIVE INFLUENCES. In 1662 the first regular newspaper outside of Italy was established in England, and in 1702 the first daily paper. Small in size, printed on but one side of the sheet, and dealing wholly with local matters, these nevertheless marked the beginnings of that daily expression of popular opinion with which we are now so familiar. [25] After about 1705 the cheap political pamphlet made its appearance, and after 1710, instead of merely communicating news, the papers began the discussion of political questions.
By 1735 a revolution had been effected in England, and papers and presses began to be established in the chief cities and towns outside of London; the freedom of the press was in a large way completed, and newspapers, for the first time in the history of the world, were made the exponents of public opinion. The press in England in consequence became an educative force of great intellectual and political importance, and did much to compensate for the lack of a general system of schools for the people. In 1772 the right to publish the debates in Parliament was finally won, over the strenuous objections [26] of George III. In 1780 the first Sunday newspaper appeared, "on the only day the lower orders had time to read a paper at all," and, despite the efforts of religious bodies to suppress it, the Sunday paper has continued to the present and has contributed its quota to the education and enlightenment of mankind. In 1785 the famous LondonTimesbegan to appear. In the middle of the eighteenth century debating societies for the consideration of public questions arose, and in 1769 "the first public meeting ever assembled in England, in which it was attempted to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights" was held, and such meetings soon became of almost daily occurrence. All these influences stimulated political thinking to a high degree, and contributed not only to a desire for still larger political freedom but for the more general diffusion of the ability to read as well (R. 250).
Still other important new influences arose during the early part of the eighteenth century, each of which tended to awaken new desires for schools and learning. In 1678 the first modern printed story to appeal to the masses, Bunyan'sPilgrim's Progress, appeared from the press. Written, as it had been, by a man of the people, its simple narrative form, its passionate religious feeling, its picture of the journey of a pilgrim through a world of sin and temptation and trial, and its Biblical language with which the common people had now become familiar—all these elements combined to make it a book that appealed strongly to all who read or heard it read, and stimulated among the masses a desire to read comparable to that awakened by the chaining of the English Bible in the churches a century before (R. 170). In 1719 the first great English novel, Defoe'sRobinson Crusoe, and in 1726Gulliver's Travels, added new stimulus to the desires awakened by Bunyan's book. All three were books of the common people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously produced had appealed only to a small educated class. In 1751 what was probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar institutions were established in other English cities.
SCIENCE AND MANUFACTURING; THE NEW ERA. England, too, from the first, showed an interest in and a tolerance toward the new scientific thinking scarcely found in any other land. This in itself is indicative of the great intellectual progress which the English people had by this time made. [27] At a time when Galileo, in Italy, was fighting, almost alone, for the right to think along the lines of the new scientific method and being imprisoned for his pains, Englishmen were reading with deep interest the epoch-making scientific writings of Lord Francis Bacon, Earlier than in other lands, too, the Newtonian philosophy found a place in the instruction of the national universities, and English scholars began to employ the new scientific method in their search for new truths. The British Royal (Scientific) Society [28] had begun to meet as early as 1645, and ever since has published in its proceedings the best of English scientific thinking. By the reign of George I (1714-27) scientific work began to be popularized, and the first little booklets on scientific subjects began to appear. These popular presentations of what had been worked out were sold at the book stalls and by peddlers and were eagerly read; by the beginning of the reign of George III (1760) they had become very common. In 1704-10 the first "Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" was printed, and in 1768-71 the first edition (three volumes) of the now famousEncyclopedia Britannicaappeared. In 1755 the famous British Museum was founded.
As early as 1698 a rude form of steam engine had been patented in England, and by 1712 this had been perfected sufficiently to be used in pumping water from the coal mines. In 1765 James Watt made the real beginning of the application of steam to industry by patenting his steam engine; in 1760 Wedgwood established the pottery industry in England; in 1767 Hargreaves devised the spinning-jenny, which banished the spindle and distaff and the old spinning-wheel; in 1769 Arkwright evolved his spinning-frame; and in 1785 Cartwright completed the process by inventing the power loom for weaving. In 1784 a great improvement in the smelting of iron ores (puddling) was worked out. These inventions, all English, were revolutionary in their effect on manufacturing. They meant the displacement of hand power by machine labor, the breakdown of home industry through the concentration of labor in factories, the rise of great manufacturing cities, [29] and the ultimate collapse of the age-old apprenticeship system of training, where the master workman with a few apprentices in his shop prepared goods for sale. They also meant the ultimate transformation of England from an agricultural into a great manufacturing and exporting nation, whose manufactured products would be sold in every corner of the globe.
By 1750 a change in attitude toward all the old intellectual problems had become marked in England, and by 1775 attention before unknown was being given there to social, political, economic, and educational questions. Religious intolerance was dying out, the harsh laws of earlier days had begun to be modified, new social and political interests [30] were everywhere attracting attention, and the great commercial expansion of England was rapidly taking shape. With England and France leading in the new scientific studies; England in the van in the development of manufacturing and the French to the fore in social influences and polite literature; England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in quite the manner expected.
[Illustration: FIG. 152. NATIONALITY OF THE WHITE POPULATION, AS SHOWN BYTHE FAMILY NAMES IN THE CENSUS OF 1790.]
ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA ESTABLISH A REPUBLIC. Though the early settlement of America, as was pointed out in chapter xv, was made from among those people and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant faith, and represented a number of nationalities and several religious sects, the thirteen colonies, nevertheless, were essentially English in origin, speech, habits, observances, and political and religious conceptions. This is well shown for the white population by the results of the first Federal census, taken in 1790, as given in the adjoining figure. This shows that of all the people in the thirteen original States, 83.5 per cent possessed names indicating pure English origin, and that 91.8 per cent had names which pointed to their having come from the British Isles. The largest non-British name nationality was the German, with 5.6 per cent of the whole, and these were found chiefly in Pennsylvania where they constituted 26.1 per cent of the State's population. Next were those having Dutch names, who constituted but 2 per cent of the total population, and but 16.1 per cent of the population of New York. No other name-nationality constituted over one half of one per cent of the total. The New England States were almost as English as England itself, 93 to 96 per cent of the names being pure English, and 98.5 to 99.8 per cent being from the British Isles.
We thus see that it was from England, the nation which had done most in the development of individual and religious liberty, that the great bulk of the early settlers of America came, and in the New World the English traditions as to constitutional government and liberty under law were early and firmly established. The centuries of struggle for representative government in England at once bore fruit here. Colony charters, charters of rights and liberties, public discussion, legislative assemblies, and liberty under law were from the first made the foundation stones upon which self-government in America was built up.
From an early date the American Colonies showed an independence to which even Englishmen were scarcely accustomed, and when the home government attempted to make the colonists pay some of the expenses of the Seven Years' War, and a larger share of the expenses of colonial administration, there was determined opposition. Having no representation in Parliament and no voice in levying the tax, the colonists declared that taxation without representation was tyranny, and refused to pay the taxes assessed. Standing squarely on their rights as Englishmen, the colonists were gradually forced into open rebellion. In 1765, and again in 1774, Declarations of Rights were drawn up and adopted by representatives from the Colonies, and were forwarded to the King. In 1774 the first Continental Congress met and formed a union of the Colonies; in 1776 the Colonies declared their independence. This was confirmed, in 1783, by the Treaty of Paris; in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was drafted; and in 1789, the American government began. In the preamble to the twenty-seven charges of tyranny and oppression made against the King in the Declaration of Independence, we find a statement of political philosophy [31] which is a combination of the results of the long English struggle for liberty and the French eighteenth-century reform philosophy and revolutionary demands. [32] This preamble declared:
We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD HISTORY. The American Revolution and its results were fraught with great importance for the future political and educational progress of mankind. Before the close of the eighteenth century the new American government had made at least four important contributions to world liberty and progress which were certain to be of large political and educational value for the future.
In the first place, the people of the Colonies had erected independent governments and had shown the possibility of the self-government of peoples on a large scale, and not merely in little city-states or communities, as had previously been the case where self-government had been tried. Democratic government was here worked out and applied to large areas, and to peoples of diverse nationalities and embracing different religious faiths. The possibility of States selecting their rulers and successfully governing themselves was demonstrated.
In the second place, the new American government which was formed did something new in world history when it united thirteen independent and autonomous States into a single federated Nation, and without destroying the independence of the States. What was formed was not a league, or confederacy, as had existed at different times among differing groups of the Greek City-States, and from time to time in the case of later Swiss and temporary European national groupings, but the union into a substantial and permanent Federal State of a number of separate States which still retained their independence, and with provision for the expansion of this national Union by the addition of new States. This federal principle in government is probably the greatest political contribution of the American Union to world development. In the twentieth- century conception of a League of Nations it has borne still further fruit.
In the third place, the different American States changed their old Colonial Charters into definite written Constitutions, each of which contained a Preamble or Bill of Rights which affirmed the fundamental principles of democratic liberty (R. 251). These now became the fundamental law for each of the separate States, and the same idea was later worked out in the Constitution of the United States. These were the first written constitutions of history, and have since served as a type for the creation of constitutional government throughout the world. In such documents to-day free peoples everywhere define the rights and duties and obligations which they regard as necessary to their safety and happiness and welfare.
Finally, the Federal Constitution provided for the inestimable boon of religious liberty, and in a way that was both revolutionary and wholesome. At the beginning of the War for Independence the Anglican (Episcopal) faith had been declared "the established religion" in seven of the Colonies, and the Congregational was the established religion in three of the New England Colonies, while but three Colonies had declared for religious freedom and refused to give a preference to any special creed. This religious problem had to be met by the Constitutional Convention, and this body handled it in the only way it could have been intelligently handled in a nation composed of so many different religious sects as was ours. It simply incorporated into the Federal Constitution provisions which guaranteed the free exercise of their religious faith to all, and forbade the establishment by Congress of any state religion, or the requirement of any religious test as a prerequisite to holding any office under the control of the Federal Government. The American people thus took a stand for religious liberty at a time when the hatreds of the Reformation still burned fiercely, and when tolerance in religious matters was as yet but little known.
IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS-LIBERTY CONTRIBUTION. The solution of the religious question arrived at was only second in importance for us to the establishment of the Federal Union, and the far-reaching significance to our future national life of the sane and for-the-time extraordinary provisions incorporated into our National Constitution can hardly be overestimated. This action led to the early abandonment of state religions, religious tests, and public taxation for religion in the old States, and to the prohibition of these in the new. The importance of this solution of the religious question for the future of popular education in the United States was great, for it laid the foundations upon which our systems of free, common, public, tax-supported, non-sectarian schools have since been built up. How we could have erected a common public-school system on a religious basis, with the many religious sects among us, it is impossible to conceive. Instead, we should have had a series of feeble, jealous, antagonistic, and utterly inefficient church-school systems, chiefly confined to elementary education, and each largely intent on teaching its peculiar church doctrines and struggling for an increasing share of public funds.
How much the American people owe to the Fathers of the Republic for this most enlightened and intelligent provision, few who have not thought carefully on the matter can appreciate. To it we must trace not only the great blessing of religious liberty, which we have so long enjoyed, but also the final establishment of our common, free, public-school systems. The beginning of the new state motive for education, which was soon to supersede the religious motive, dates from the establishment with us of republican governments; and the beginning of the emancipation of education from church domination goes back to this wise provision inserted in our National Constitution.
This national attitude was later copied in the state constitutions, and as a preamble to practically all we find a Bill of Rights, which in almost every case included a provision for freedom of religious worship (Rs. 251, 260). After the middle of the nineteenth century a further provision prohibiting sectarian teaching or state aid to sectarian schools was everywhere added.
NEW DEMANDS FOR REFORM THAT COULD NOT BE RESISTED. More than in any other continental European country France had, by 1783, become a united nation, conscious of a modern national feeling. Yet in France mediaeval abuses in both State and Church had survived, as we have seen, to as great an extent almost as in any European nation. So determined were the clergy and nobility to retain their old powers, not only in France but throughout the continent of Europe as well, that progressive reform seemed well-nigh impossible. The work of the benevolent despots had, after all, been superficial. By the last quarter of the eighteenth, though, a progressive change was under way which was certain to produce either evolution or revolution. The influence of the American experiment in nation-building now became pronounced. In 1779 Franklin took a copy of the new Pennsylvania Constitution with him to Paris, and in 1780 John Adams did the same with the Massachusetts Constitution. Frenchmen instantly recognized here, in concrete form, the ideas with which their own heads were filled. In 1783 Franklin published in France a French translation of all the American Constitutions, and the National Constitution of 1787 was as eagerly read and discussed in Paris as in New York or Philadelphia or Boston. America appeared to the French of that stormy period as an ideal land; where the dreams of Rousseau about the social contract had been transformed into realities. Two years later thecahiersof the Third Estate demanded a written constitution for France. The French, too, had aided the American Colonies in their struggle for liberty, and French soldiers returning home carried back new political ideas drawn from the remarkable political progress of the new American Nation. By 1788 the demand for reform in France had become so insistent, and the condition of the treasury of the State was so bad, that it was finally felt necessary to summon a meeting of the States-General—a sort of national parliament consisting of representatives of the three great Estates: clergy, nobility, and commons—which had not met in France since 1614.
[Illustration: FIG. 153. THE STATES-GENERAL IN SESSION AT VERSAILLES(After a contemporary drawing by Monnet)]
Besides electing its representatives, each locality and order was allowed to draw up a series of instructions, orcahiers(+R. 252+), for the guidance of its delegates. Thesecahiersare a mine of information as to the demands and hopes and interests of the French people, [33] and it is interesting to know that thecahiersof nobility, clergy, and commons alike included, among their demands, the organization of a comprehensive plan of education for France. [34]
FRANCE ESTABLISHES CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. The States-General met May 5, 1789, and soon (June 20) resolved itself into the National or Constituent Assembly. Terrified by the uprisings and burnings of châteaux throughout France, on the night of August fourth, in a few hours, it adopted a series of decrees which virtually abolished theAncien Régimeof privileges for France. The nobility gave up most of their old rights, the serfs [35] were freed, and the special privileges of towns were surrendered. Later the Assembly adopted a "Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (R. 253), much like the American Declaration of Independence. This declared, among other things, that all men were born free and have equal rights, that taxes should be proportional to wealth, that all citizens were equal before the law and have a right to help make the laws, and that the people of the nation were sovereign. These principles struck at the very foundations of the old system.
Soon a Constitution for France, the first ever promulgated in modern Europe, was prepared and adopted (1791). This abolished the ancient privileges and reorganized France as a self-governing nation, much after the American plan. Local government was created, and the absolute monarchy was changed to a limited constitutional one. Next the property of the Church was taken over by the State, the monasteries were suppressed, and the priests and bishops were made state officials and paid a fixed state salary. The Jesuits had been expelled from France in 1764; and in 1792 the Brothers of the Christian Schools were not allowed longer to teach. Among other important matters, the Constitution of 1791 declared that:
There shall be created and organized a system of public instruction common to all citizens, and gratuitous, with respect to those branches of instruction which are indispensable for all men.
Up to this point the Revolution in France had proceeded relatively peacefully, considering the nature of the long-standing abuses which were to be remedied. In August, 1792, the King was imprisoned, and in January, 1793, he was executed and a Republic proclaimed. [36] Then followed a reign of terror, which we do not need to follow, and which ended only when Napoleon became master of France.
BENEFICENT RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION. The French Revolution was not an accident or a product of chance, but rather the inevitable result of an attempt to dam up the stream of human progress and prevent its orderly onward flow. The Protestant Revolts were the first great revolutionary wave, the Puritan revolution in England was another, the formation of the American Republic and the institution of constitutional government and religious freedom another, while the French Revolution brought the rising movement to a head and swept away, in a deluge of blood, the very foundations of the mediaeval system. Along with much that was disastrous, the French Revolution accomplished after all much that was of greatest importance for human progress. The world at times seems to be in need of such a great catharsis. Progress was made in a decade that could hardly have been made in a century by peaceful evolution. The old order of privilege came to an end, mediaevalism was swept away, and the serf was evolved into the free farmer and citizen. One fifth of the soil of France was restored to the use of the people from the monasteries, and an additional one third from the Church and nobility. The new principles of citizenship—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—were for France revolutionary in the extreme, while the assertion that the sovereignty of a nation rests with the people rather than with the king, here successfully promulgated, ended for all time the "divine-right-of-kings" idea for France. After political theory had for a time run mad, the organizing genius of Napoleon consolidated the gains, gave France a strong government, a uniform code of laws, [37] and began that organization of schools for the nation which ultimately meant the taking over of education from the Church and its provision at the expense of and in the interests of the nation.
THE NATIONAL IDEA EXTENDS TO OTHER LANDS. The reform work in France, together with the examples of English and American liberty, soon began to have their influence in other lands as well. People everywhere began to see that the old régime of privilege and misgovernment ought to be replaced. Other countries abolished serfdom, introduced better laws, and made reforms in the abuses of both Church and State. French armies and rulers carried the best of French ideas to other lands, and, where the French rule continued long enough, these ideas became fixed. In particular was theCode Napoléoncopied in the Netherlands, the Italian States, and the States of southern and western Germany. The national spirit of Italy was awakened, and the Italian liberals began to look forward to the day when the small Italian States might be reunited into an Italian Nation, with Rome as its capital. This became the work of nineteenth-century Italian statesmen. For the first time in Spanish history, too, the people became conscious, under French occupation, of a feeling of national unity, and similarly the national spirit of German lands was stirred by the conquests of Napoleon.
A constitution was obtained in Spain, in 1812, and between 1815 and 1821 all of Spain's South American colonies—Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela—revolted, became independent, and set up republics with constitutional governments, some of the larger ones based on the federal principle, as in the United States. Brazil similarly freed itself from Portugal and set up a constitutional and federated monarchy, in 1822. The Kingdom of Naples obtained constitutional government in 1820, and Sardinia in 1821. In 1823, when Spain with Austria's aid prepared to reconquer the Spanish South American Republics, President Monroe transmitted to the American Congress his message in which he declared that any attempt on the part of European nations to suppress republicanism on the American continent would be considered by the United States as an unfriendly act. This has since been known as theMonroe Doctrine. In 1829 Greece obtained her independence from Turkey, and in 1843 a constitutional form of government was obtained.
IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT. Since the closing decades of the eighteenth century, when democratic government and written constitutions began, the sweep of democratic government has become almost world wide. Nation after nation has changed to democratic and constitutional forms of government, the latest additions being Portugal (1911), China (1912), Russia (1917), and Germany (1918). New English colonies, too, have carried English self-government into almost every continent. The World War of 1914-18 gave a new emphasis to democracy, and there is good reason to believe that government of and by and for the people is ultimately destined to prevail among all the intelligent nations and races of the earth.
With the development of democratic government there has everywhere been a softening of old laws, the growth of humanitarianism, the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, important legislation as to labor, a previously unknown attention to the poor and the dependents of society, a vast extension of educational advantages, and the taking over of education from the Church by the State and the erection of the school into an important institution for the preservation and advancement of the national welfare. These consequences of the onward sweep of new-world ideas we shall trace more in detail in the chapters which follow.
1. Show the importance, for human progress, of each of the meanings of the new eighteenth-century liberalism, as enumerated on pages 471-72.
2. How do you explain the lack of any permanent influence on Spanish life of the work of the benevolent despots in Spain?
3. Show the liberalizing influence of the rise of scientific investigation and economic studies, for a nation still oppressed by mediaevalism and bad government.
4. Enumerate the new sciences which arose in the eighteenth century.
5. Indicate the importance of the freedom of the press in the development of English political liberty.
6. Explain how the religious-freedom attitude of the American national constitution conferred an inestimable boon on the States in the matter of public education.
In the accompanyingBook of Readingsthe following illustrative selections are reproduced:
247. Dabney: Ecclesiastical Tyranny in France. 248. Voltaire: On the Relation of Church and State. 249. Rousseau: Extract from the Social Contract. 250. Buckle: Changes in English Thinking in the Eighteenth Century, 251. Pennsylvania Constitution: Bill of Rights in. 252. Clergy of Blois:Cahierof 1779. 253. France: Declaration of the Rights of Man.
1. Explain why ecclesiastical tyranny should have awakened such a spirit of rebellion in France (247), and not in Spain or in Italian lands.
2. Just what attitude toward religion is shown in the extract from Voltaire (248)?
3. Bolshevists in Russia and in America talk to-day as did Rousseau in the Social Contract (249). Compare the justification of each with the eighteenth-century France of Rousseau.
4. What do all the changes enumerated by Buckle (250) indicate as to the spread of general education, irrespective of schools, among the English people?
5. Compare the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights of 1776 (251) with that of your own present-day state constitution,
6. Just what type of educational provisions, and what administrative organization, did the recommendations of the Clergy of Blois (252) contemplate? Indicate its shortcomings for eighteenth-century France.
7. Compare the main ideas of 251 and 253.
Dabney, R. H.The Causes of the French Revolution.Taine, H. A.The Ancient Regime.
THE STATE AS SERVANT OF THE CHURCH. With the rise of the Protestant sects we noted, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for the first time since Christianity became supreme in the western world, the beginnings of a state connection with the education of the young. The Protestant reformers, obtaining the support of the Protestant princes and kings, had successfully used this support to assist them in the organization of church schools as an aid to the reformed faith. Luther, it will be recalled (p. 312), had made a strong appeal to the mayors and magistrates of all German lands to establish schools as a part of their civic duties (R. 156), and had contended that a solemn obligation rested upon them to do so. The Dutch Provinces had worked closely with the Dutch Protestant synods (p. 334) in ordering schools established and in providing for their financing; Calvin had organized a religious City-State at Geneva (p. 330), of which religion and learning had been the corner-stones; the Scottish Parliament, by the laws of 1633 and 1646 (p. 335), had ordered schools for Scottish children in connection with the churches; and in the Scandinavian countries and in Finland the beginnings of a connection with the State had also been made (p. 315). Finally, in the new Massachusetts Colony the laws of 1642 and 1647 (p. 366) had, for the first time in the English-speaking world, ordered that children be taught "to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country" (p. 364), and that schools be established by the towns, under penalty if they refused to do so. In all Protestant lands we saw that the reformers appealed, from time to time, to what were then the servants of the churches—the rising civil governments and principalities and States—to use their civil authority to force the people to meet their new religious obligations in the matter of schooling.
The purpose of the schooling ordered established, however, was almost wholly religious. Massachusetts, in ordering instruction in the "capital laws of the country," as well as reading and religion, had formed a marked exception. In nearly all lands the rising state governments merely helped the Protestant churches to create the elementary vernacular religious school, and to make of it an auxiliary for the protection of orthodoxy and the advancement of the faith. Even in the new state school systems of the German States—Saxony, Würtemberg (p. 317), Brunswick, Weimar, Gotha—the elementary schools established were for religious rather than for state ends. This condition continued until well toward the middle of the eighteenth century.
THE NEW STATE THEORY OF EDUCATION. After about the middle of the eighteenth century a new theory as to the purpose of education, and one destined to make rapid headway, began to be advanced. This theory had already made marked progress, as we shall see, in the New England Colonies, and had also found expression, as we shall also see in a later chapter, in the organizing work of Frederick the Great in Prussia. It was from the French political philosophers of the eighteenth century, though, that its clearest definition came. They now advanced the idea that schools were essentially civil affairs, the purpose of which should be to promote the everyday interests of society and the welfare of the State, rather than the welfare of the Church, and to prepare for a life here rather than a life hereafter.
After about 1750 a critical and reformatory pedagogy rapidly began to take shape in France, and the second half of the eighteenth century became a period of criticism and discontent and reconstruction in education, as well as in politics and religion.
This criticism and discontent in France was greatly stimulated by the decline in character and influence of the Jesuit schools. Unwilling to change their instruction to meet the needs of a changing society, their schools had become formal in character (R. 146), and were now engaged chiefly in stilling thinking rather than in promoting it. In consequence the schools had fallen into disrepute throughout all France. The Society, too, in the eighteenth century, came to be a powerful political organization which strove to dominate the State. So bad had the situation become by 1762, that the different parliaments in the provinces and in Paris had formulated complaints against the Jesuits and their schools, [1] and, in 1764, the king was induced to suppress the Order. [2] This decline in influence and final suppression of the Society gave rise to some rather remarkable pedagogical literature, which looked to the creation of a system of state secondary schools in France to replace those of the Jesuits.
The outcome was the rise of a new national and individual conception of the educational purpose. This was destined in time to spread to other lands and to lead to the rise of complete state school systems, financed and managed by the State and conducted for state ends, and to the ultimate divorce of Church and State, in all progressive lands, in the matter of the education of the young. Teachers trained and certificated by the State were in time to supplant the nuns and brothers of the religious congregations in Catholic lands, as well as teachers who served as assistants to the pastors in Protestant lands and whose chief purpose was to uphold the teachings and advance the interests of the sect; citizens were to supplant the ecclesiastic in the supervision of instruction; and the courses of instruction were to be changed in direction and vastly broadened in scope to make them minister to the needs of the State rather than the Church, and to prepare pupils for useful life here rather than for life in another world.
[Illustration: FIG. 154. ROUSSEAU (1712-78)]
THE FRENCH POLITICAL THEORISTS. The leading French political theorists of the two decades between 1760 and 1780 now began to discuss education as in theory a civil affair, intimately connected with the promotion of the welfare of the State. The more important of these, and their chief ideas were:
1.Rousseau.The first of the critical and reformatory pedagogical writers to awaken any large interest and obtain a general hearing was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The same year (1762) that hisSocial Contractappeared and attacked the foundations of the old political system (p. 483), hisÉmilealso appeared and attacked with equal vigor the religious and social theory as to education then prevailing throughout western Europe. For the stiff and unnatural methods in education, under which children were dressed and made to behave as adults, [3] the harsh discipline of the time, and the excessive emphasis on religious instruction and book education, he preached the substitution of life amid nature, childish ways and sports, parental love, and an education that considered the instincts and natural development of children.
Gathering up the political and social ideas of his age as to ecclesiastical and political despotism; the nature of the social contract; that the "state of nature" was the ideal one, and the one in which men had been intended to live; that human duty called for a return to the "state of nature," whatever that might be; and that the artificiality and hypocrisy of his age in manners, dress, religion, and education were all wrong—Rousseau restated his political philosophy in terms of the education of the boy, Émile. Despite its many exaggerations, much faulty reasoning, and many imperfections, the book had a tremendous influence upon Europe in laying bare the limitations and defects and abuses of the formal and ecclesiastical education of the time. [4] He may be regarded as the first important writer to sap the foundations of the old system of religious education, and to lay a basis for a new type of child training (R. 254). Though Rousseau's enthusiasm took the form of theory run mad, and the educational plan he proposed was largely impossible, he nevertheless popularized education, not only in France, but among the reading public of the progressive European States as well. After he had written, the old limited and narrow religious education was on the defensive, and, though time was required, the transition to a more secular type of education was inevitable as fast as nations and peoples could shake off the dominance of the Church in state affairs.
[Illustration: FIG. 155 LA CHALOTAIS (1701-83)]
2.La Chalotais.The year following the publication of Rousseau'sÉmileappeared La Chalotais'sEssai d'éducation nationale(1763). René de la Chalotais, a Solicitor-General for the Parliament of Bretagne, was one of the notable French parliamentarians of the middle of the eighteenth century. Unlike Rousseau's highly imaginary, exaggerated, sentimental, and paradoxical volume, La Chalotais produced a practical and philosophical discussion of the problem of the education of a people. Declaring firmly that education was essentially a civil affair; that it was the function of government to make citizens contented by educating them for their sphere in society; that citizen and secular teachers should not be excluded for celibates; [5] that the real purpose of education should be to prepare citizens for France; that the poor were deserving of education; and that "the most enlightened people will always have the advantage" in the struggles of a modern world, La Chalotais produced a work which was warmly approved by such political philosophers as Voltaire, Diderot, and Turgot, and which was translated into several European languages (R. 255). Though far less widely read than Rousseau'sÉmile, it was far more influential in shaping subsequent political theory and action regarding the relations of education to the State. Nearly every proposal for educational legislation during the days of the Revolution went back in idea to this philosophic discussion of the question by La Chalotais and to the practical proposals of Rolland and Turgot.
[Illustration: FIG. 156. ROLLAND (1734-93)]
3.Rolland.In 1768 Rolland, president of the Parliament of Paris, presented to his colleagues a report in which he outlined a national system of education to replace both the schools of the Jesuits and those of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. La Chalotais had proposed a more modern system of state schools chiefly to replace those of the Jesuits, but Rolland went further and proposed the extension of education to all, and the supervision of all schools by a central council of the Government. By means of a centralized control, a central university to which the other universities of France were to be subordinate, a higher normal school to train teachers for the colleges (secondary schools), and universal education, [6] Rolland hoped to develop for France a national spirit, a national character, and a national government and code of laws, and to bring the youth of the provinces into harmony with the best of all French ideas.
4.Turgot.In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance (p. 481), and in 1775 he made a series of recommendations to the King in which he set forth ideas analogous to those of Rolland, and presented an eloquent plea for the formation of a national council of public instruction and the establishment of a system of civil and national education for the whole of France. In closing he wrote:
Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already have their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to you nothing of more advantage to your people than to cause to be given to all your subjects an instruction which shows them the obligations they owe to society and to your power to protect them, and the interest they have in fulfilling those duties for the public good and their own. This moral and social instruction requires books expressly prepared, by competition, and with great care, and a schoolmaster in each parish to teach them to children, along with the art of writing, reading, counting, measuring, and the principles of mechanics. The study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of all the other studies…. There are methods and establishments for training geometricians, physicists, and painters, but there are none for training citizens.
5.Diderot.In 1776 Diderot, editor with D'Alembert of theEncyclopaedia(1751-72), prepared, at the request of Catherine II (p. 477), under the title ofPlan of a University, a complete scheme for the organization of a state system of public instruction for Russia. Though the plan was never carried out, it was printed and much discussed in France, and is important as coming from one of the most influential Frenchmen of his time. He commends as an example to be followed the work of the German States in the organization of popular instruction. For Russia he outlines first a system of people's schools, which shall be free and obligatory for all, and in which instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, morals, civics, and religion shall be taught. "From the Prime Minister to the lowest peasant," he says, "it is good for every one to know how to read, write, and count." For the series of secondary schools to be established, he condemns the usual practice of devoting so much of the instruction to the humanities and a mediaeval type of logic and ethics, and urges instead the introduction of instruction in mathematics, in the modern sciences, literature, and the work of governments. Classical studies he would confine to the last years of the course. Science, history, drawing, and music find a place in his scheme.
All this instruction Diderot would place under the supervisory control of an administrative bureau to be known as theUniversity of Russia, at the head of which should be a statesman, who should exercise control of all the work of public instruction beneath. Though never carried out in Russia, the University of France of 1808 is largely an embodiment of the ideas he proposed in 1776.
LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS TO EMBODY THESE IDEAS. During the quarter of a century between the publication of Rousseau'sÉmileand the summoning of the States-General to reform France (1762-88), the educational as well as the political ideas of the French reformers had taken deep root with the thinking classes of the nation. Thecahiersof 1789, of all Orders (p. 500), gave evidence of this in their somewhat general demand for the creation of some form of an educational system for France (R. 252). From the first days of the Revolution pedagogical literature became plentiful, and the successive National Assemblies found time, amid the internal reorganization of France, constitution-making, the troubles with and trial of the King, and the darkening cloud of foreign intervention, to listen to reports and addresses on education and to enact a bill for the organization of a national school system. The more important of these educational efforts were:
1.The Constituent Assembly(June 17, 1789, to September 30, 1791). In the Constituent Assembly, into which the States-General resolved itself, June 17, 1789, and which continued until after it had framed the constitution of 1791, two notable addresses and one notable report on the organization of education were made. The Count de Mirabeau, a nobleman turned against his class and elected to the States-General as a representative of the Third Estate, made addresses on the "Organization of a Teaching Body" and on the "Organization of a NationalLycée." In the first he advocated the establishment of primary schools throughout France. In the second he proposed the establishment of colleges of literature in each department, with a NationalLycéeat Paris for higher (university) education, and to contain the essentials of a national normal school or teachers' college as well.
[Illustration: FIG. 157 COUNT DE MIRABEAU (1749-91)]
[Illustration: FIG. 158. TALLEYRAND (1758-1838)]
Mirabeau's proposals represent rather a transition in thinking from the old to the new, but the Report of Talleyrand (1791), former Bishop of Autun, now turned revolutionist, embodies the full culmination of revolutionary educational thought. Public instruction he termed "a power which embraces everything, from the games of infancy to the most imposing fêtes of the Nation." He definitely proposed the organization of a complete state system of public instruction for France, to consist of a primary school in every canton (community, district), open to the children of peasants and workmen—classes heretofore unprovided with education; a secondary school in every department (county); a series of special schools in the chief French cities, to prepare for the professions; and a National Institute, or University, to be located at Paris. Inspired by Montesquieu's principle that "the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government," Talleyrand proposed a bill designed to give effect to the provisions of the Constitution of 1791 relating to education (p. 501), and to provide an education for the people of France who were now to exercise, through elected representatives, the legislative power for France. Instruction he held to be the necessary counterpoise of liberty, and every citizen was to be taught to know, obey, love, and protect the new constitution. Political, social, and personal morality were to take the place of religion in the cantonal schools, which were to be free and equally open to all. As the Constituent Assembly was succeeded by the newly elected Legislative Assembly within three weeks after Talleyrand submitted his Report, no action was taken on his bill.
[Illustration: FIG. 159. CONDORCET (1743-94)]
2.The Legislative Assembly(October 1, 1791, to September 21, 1792). This new legislative body was far more radical in character than its predecessor, and far more radical than was the sentiment of France at the time. Among other acts it abolished (1792) the old universities and confiscated (1793) their property to the State. To it was submitted (April 20-21, 1792) by the mathematician, philosopher, and revolutionist, Marquis de Condorcet, [7] on behalf of the Committee on Public Instruction and as a measure of reconstruction, a Report and draft of a Law for the organization of a complete democratic system of public instruction for France (R. 256). It provided for the organizing of a primary school for every four hundred inhabitants, in which each individual was "to be taught to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the plenitude of his own rights," and where principles would be taught, calculated to "insure the perpetuation of liberty and equality." The bill also provided, for the first time, for the organization of higher primary schools in the principal towns; colleges (secondary schools) in the chief cities (one for every four thousand inhabitants); a higher school for each "department";Lycées, or institutions of still higher learning, at nine places in France; and a National Society of Sciences and Arts to crown the educational system at Paris. The national system of education he proposed was to be equally open to women, as well as men, and to be gratuitous throughout. Teachers for each grade of school were to be prepared in the school next above. Sunday lectures for workingmen and peasants were to be given by teachers everywhere. Public morality, political intelligence, human progress, and the preservation of liberty and equality were the aims of the instruction. The necessity for education in a constitutional government he saw clearly. "A free constitution," he writes, "which should not be correspondent to the universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and corrupt people." Anarchy or despotism he held to be the future for peoples who become free without being enlightened. He held it to be a fundamental principle that:
The order of nature includes no distinctions in society beyond those of education and wealth. To establish among citizens an equality in fact, and to realize the equality confirmed by law, ought to be the primary object of national instruction.
The bill proposed by Condorcet, while too ambitious for the France of his day, was thoroughly sound as a democratic theory of education, and an accurate prediction of what the nineteenth century brought generally into existence. Condorcet's Report was discussed, but not acted upon.
[Illustration: FIG. 160. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCEFounded by Article 298 of the Constitution of Year III (1793)]
3.The National Convention(September 21, 1792, to October 26, 1795). The Convention was also a radical body, deeply interested in the creation of a system of state schools for the people of France. To higher education there was for a time marked opposition, though later in its history the Convention erected a number of important higher technical institutions and schools, among the most important of which was the Institute of France. There was also in the Convention marked opposition to all forms of clerical control of schools. The schools of the Brothers of the Christian Schools were suppressed by it, in 1792, and all secular and endowed schools and colleges were abolished and their property confiscated, in 1793. The complete supremacy of the State in all educational matters was now asserted. Great enthusiasm was manifested for the organization of state primary schools, which were ordered established in 1793 (R. 258 a), and in these:
Children of all classes were to receive that first education, physical, moral, and intellectual, the best adapted to develop in them republican manners, patriotism, and the love of labor, and to render them worthy of liberty and equality.
The course of instruction was to include: "to speak, read, and write correctly the French language; the geography of France; the rights and duties of men and citizens; [8] the first notions of natural and familiar objects; the use of numbers, the compass, the level, the system of weights and measures, the mechanical powers, and the measurement of time. They are to be taken into the fields and the workshops where they may see agricultural and mechanical operations going on, and take part in the same so far as their age will allow."
What a change from the course of instruction in the religious schools just preceding this period!
[Illustration: FIG. 161. LAKANAL (1762-1845)]
A multiplicity of reports, bills, and decrees, often more or less contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had considered the subject carefully, but without taking action, the Convention now acted. The nation, though, was so engrossed by the internal chaos and foreign aggression that there was neither time nor funds to carry the decrees into effect.
The most extreme proposal of the period was the bill of Lepelletier le Saint-Fargeau to create a national system of education modeled closely after that of ancient Sparta. The best of the proposals probably was the Lakanal Law, of November 17, 1794, which ordered a school for every one thousand inhabitants, with special divisions for boys and girls, and which provided for instruction in:
1. Reading and writing the French language. 2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Constitution. 3. Lessons on republican morals. 4. The rules of simple calculation and surveying. 5. Lessons in geography and the phenomena of nature. 6. Lessons on heroic actions, and songs of triumph.
Lakanal also carefully prescribed the method of instruction, and advocated the founding of a national normal school (Latinnorma; a rule), which idea the Convention adopted in 1794, the school opening [9] in January, 1795. Supplementing this was the law of February 25, 1795, ordering central or higher schools established to replace the former colleges, [10] one for every three hundred thousand of the population, which were to offer instruction from twelve to eighteen. The course was to include:
12 to 14—Drawing, natural history, ancient and living languages. 14 to 16—Mathematics, natural philosophy, experimental chemistry. 16 to 18—Grammar, literature, history, legislation.
Organized on a soviet principle, each professor declared the equal of every other, and lacking any effective administration or discipline, these institutions soon fell into disrepute and were displaced when Napoleon reorganized secondary education in France.
The law of October 25, 1795, closed the work of the Convention. This made less important provisions for primary education (R. 258 b) than had preceding bills, but was the only permanent contribution of this period to the organization of primary schools. It placed greater emphasis than had the legislative Assembly on the creation of secondary and higher institutions (R. 258 a), of more value to the bourgeois class. This bill of 1795 represents a reaction from the extreme republican ideas of a few years earlier, and the triumph of the conservative middle-class elements in the nation over the radical republican elements previously in control.
The Convention also, in the latter part of its history, created a number of higher technical institutions of importance, which were expressive alike of the French interest in scientific subjects which arose during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and of the new French military needs. Many of these institutions have persisted to the present, so well have they answered the scientific interests and needs of the nation. A mere list of the institutions created is all that need be given. These were:
Museum or Conservatory of Arts (Jan. 16, 1794).Conservatory of Arts and Trades (Oct. 10, 1794).New medical schools (Schools of Health) ordered (Dec. 4, 1794).Museum of Natural History (Dec. 11, 1794).Central Schools to succeed the former Colleges (secondary schools)(Feb. 25, 1795).School of Living Oriental Languages (March 30, 1795).Veterinary Schools (April 21, 1795).Course in Archaeology, National Library (June 8, 1795).Bureau of Longitude (June 29, 1795).Conservatory of Music (Aug. 3, 1795).The National Library (Oct. 17, 1795).Museum of Archaeological Monuments (Oct. 20, 1795).Polytechnic Schools (R. 257);School of Civil Engineering;School of Hydrographic Engineers;and School of Mining (Oct. 22, 1795).