It is formed on a scale still more extensive than the _Society for
the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce_, instituted at
London. Its meetings are held in the _Louvre_; but, though fixed in
the metropolis, it embraces the whole extent of the Republic, and
every department will participate in the benefits which it proffers.
The chief objects of this society are: To collect, from all quarters,
discoveries and inventions useful to the progress of the arts; to
bestow annually premiums and gratuitous encouragements; to propagate
instruction, by disseminating manuals on different objects relative
to the arts, by combining the lights of theory with the results of
practice, and by constructing at its own expense, and disseminating
among the public in general, and particularly in the manufactories,
such machines, instruments, and apparatus as deserve to be more
generally known and brought into use; to make essays and experiments
for ascertaining the utility which may be expected from new
discoveries; to make advances to artists who may be in distress, or
deficient in the means to put in practice the processes of their
inventions; to unite by new ties all such persons as from their
situation in life, their taste, or their talents, feel an interest in
the progress of the arts; to become the centre of similar
institutions, which are called for in all the principal
manufacturing-towns of the Republic; in a word, to _excite emulation,
diffuse knowledge, and assist talents_.
To attain these objects, various committees, consisting of men the
most conversant in knowledge relative to the arts, are already
appointed, and divide among them _gratuitously_ the whole of the
labour.
This society, founded, on principles so purely patriotic, will, no
doubt, essentially second the strenuous efforts of the government to
reanimate the different branches of national industry. The free and
spontaneous concurrence of the men of whom it is composed, may unite
the power of opinion to that of other means; and public opinion
produces naturally that which power and authority obtain only by a
slow and difficult progress.
But, while those branches of industry, more immediately connected
with the arts, are stimulated by these simultaneous encouragements,
that science, on the practice of which depends the welfare of States,
is not neglected. Independently of the Council of Agriculture,
Commerce and Arts, established under the presidency of the Minister
of the Interior, here is a