proud
title of "The eldest Daughter of the King,"--_La Fille ainee du Roi_.
She upheld the Oriflamme against the feudal gonfalons, and was largely
instrumental in establishing the central power of the crown.[E] In the
terrible struggle of Philip the Fair with Boniface VIII., she furnished
the legal weapons of the contest. She furnished, in her Chancellor
Gerson, the leading spirit of the Council of Constance. In the Council
of Bale she obtained for France the "Pragmatic Sanction." Her voice was
consulted on the question of the Salic Law; unhappily, also in the trial
of Jeanne d'Arc; and when Louis XI. concluded a treaty of peace with
Maximilian of Austria, the University of Paris was the guaranty on the
part of France.

Universities are no longer political bodies, but they may be still
political powers,--centres and sources of political influence. Our own
College in the time of the Revolution was a manifest power on the side
of liberty, the political as well as academic mother of Otis and the
Adamses. In 1768, "when the patronage of American manufactures was the
test of patriotism," the Senior Class voted unanimously to take their
degrees apparelled in the coarse cloths of American manufacture. In
1776, the Overseers required of the professors a satisfactory account of
their political faith. So much was then thought of the influence on
young minds of the right or wrong views of political questions
entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right. When the life
of the nation is concerned,--in the struggle with foreign or domestic
foes,--there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek
to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which
those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect.
Better the College should be disbanded than be a nursery of treason.
Better these halls even now should be levelled with the ground, than
that any influence should prevail in them unfriendly to American
nationality. No amount of intellectual acquirements can atone for
defective patriotism. Intellectual supremacy alone will not avert the
downfall of states. The subtlest intellect of Greece, the sage who could
plan an ideal republic of austere virtue and perfect proportions, could
not preserve his own; but the love of country inspired by Lycurgus kept
the descendants of the Dorians free two thousand years after the
disgrace of Chaeronea had sealed the fate of the rest of Greece.