gs. The newspapers were not only gagged,
but metamorphosed--the "French Citizen" into the "French Courier," the
"Journal of Debates" into the "Journal of the Empire." Their columns
were filled with laudations of the Emperor; their political articles
were virtually composed in the Foreign Office; and there was not a
symptom of anything like the existence of party feeling. A certain
journalist having been allowed to make statements concerning the
luxury at court, the editor of the offending paper was given to
understand that the Emperor would tolerate no such criticism nor any
remarks contrary to his interests.[17]

[Footnote 17: In general, for the censorship of the press see
Welschinger: La censure sous le Premier Empire. Sorel: Essais
d'histoire et de critique.]

But the crowning work of this period was the final realization of the
plan for organizing public instruction in what was designated by the
head of the state as the Imperial University. Though somewhat changed
in name and character, it exists to-day virtually as it came from the
maker's hand. Like the institution of the prefecture, it is a
faultless machine of equalization and centralization, molding the mass
of educated Frenchmen into one form, rendering them responsive and
receptive to authoritative ideas from their youth upward, and passive
in their attitude toward instruction. Joseph de Maistre used to preach
that, all social order depending on the authority of beliefs as well
as on the authority of behavior, no man who denied the supremacy of
the Pope would permanently admit the sovereignty of the state.
Napoleon furnished a standing refutation of this thesis. The whole
system of public instruction in France has under the third republic
not merely been secularized, but it has been made, and for a quarter
of a century has remained, substantially infidel. Twenty-five academic
generations of living French citizens, reckoning each year's output as
a generation, have come out from its laboratory with a minimum of
faith; but state supremacy and state socialism are, in a moderate
form, more prevalent among them than among any similar body of men
elsewhere.

The University of France means literally the totality of all
instruction in the country, organized by successive stages into a
single system, and rigidly controlled from above. The outlines
sketched in the law passed in 1802, and supplemented in 1806, were
carefully followed by N