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 regime, 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 lycees 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 ant