The decay of letters and philosophy during the progress of the French
Revolution placed the French under the necessity of establishing some
measures to restore the cultivation of science and literature. Thus the
National Institute was eventually formed. The old Academies had been
completely destroyed, their members banished, murdered, or dispersed.
[Sidenote: THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE]
The National Institute is designed to remedy this evil by once more
collecting together the genius, talents and industry of France, and it
belongs to the whole Republic and is fixed at Paris. It is composed of
_one hundred and forty-four members resident in the capital_, and
144 Associates, taken from different parts of the Republic, together
with 24 learned foreigners. Every preference in this arrangement is
manifestly given to Paris, at the expense of the Departments.
The Departments, containing a majority of 30 to 1 compared with the
metropolis, are never expected to produce more great men collectively
than the latter. This is absurd, for every one knows that under the old
Monarchy there were men scattered over the provinces often equal and in
many instances far superior to the members of the Parisian Academies.
Montesquieu[1] was a member of the Academy of Bordeaux in 1716, and
it was not till the year 1728 that he was admitted into the Académie
Française. Indeed, an admittance into that famous society was often no
evidence of supereminent merit. Genius had to contest against cabal,
intrigue and Court favour; so that the _literati_ of Europe looked
for great and estimable men in other Academies of France, such as Aix,
Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, &c.
The pre-eminence thus accorded to the Parisian _savans_, who are
in general a gang of the vilest ruffians in the world, is a marked
insult to the rest of the Republic, and proves that to rule France it
is only necessary to be master at Paris. For the sake of this city,
France, as well as foreign countries, has been laid under contribution
and pillaged of whatever transportable monuments of art and genius
they possessed. Had it been possible, the triumphal arch at Orange,
the bridge of Gard, the amphitheatre at Nismes would have been removed
here to gratify the fancy of the Parisian rabble of philosophers and
legislators.
The law by which the learned men of a single city were placed on a
level with those who people the whole of a vast country was made
by the very men who afterwards became self-elected members of this
_miscalled_ National Institute. It is no trivial matter to be
one of the 144 resident in Paris. It leads to fame and fortune, to
places and appointments, and it is the highest step on the ladder of
philosophical ambition.
To return to the laws of the Institute, it is divided into three
classes: