My lord:—­In a military empire, ruled by a military despot, it is a necessary policy that the education of youth should also be military.  In all our public schools or prytanees, a boy, from the moment of entering, is registered in a company, and regularly drilled, exercised, and reviewed, punished for neglect or fault according to martial law, and advanced if displaying genius or application.  All our private schools that wish for the protection of Government are forced to submit to the same military rules, and, therefore, most of our conscripts, so far from being recruits, are fit for any service as soon as put into requisition.  The fatal effects to the independence of Europe to be dreaded from this sole innovation, I apprehend, have been too little considered by other nations.  A great Power, that can, without obstacle, and with but little expense, in four weeks increase its disposable military force from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty thousand young men, accustomed to military duty from their youth, must finally become the master of all other or rival Powers, and dispose at leisure of empires, kingdoms, principalities, and republics.  Nothing can save them but the adoption of similar measures for their preservation as have been adopted for their subjugation.

When l’Etat Militaire for the year 13 (a work containing the official statement of our military forces) was presented to Bonaparte by Berthier, the latter said:  “Sire, I lay before Your Majesty the book of the destiny of the world, which your hands direct as the sovereign guide of the armies of your empire.”  This compliment is a truth, and therefore no flattery.  It might as justly have been addressed to a Moreau, a Macdonald, a Le Courbe, or to any other general, as to Bonaparte, because a superior number of well disciplined troops, let them be well or even indifferently commanded, will defeat those inferior in number.  Three to one would even overpower an army of giants.  Add to it the unity of plans, of dispositions, and of execution, which Bonaparte enjoys exclusively over such a great number of troops, while ten, or perhaps fifty, will direct or contradict every movement of his opponents.  I tremble when I meditate on Berthier’s assertion; may I never live to see it realized, and to see all hitherto independent nations prostrated, acknowledge that Bonaparte and destiny are the same, and the same distributor of good and evil.

One of the bad consequences of this our military education of youth is a total absence of all religious and moral lessons.  Arnaud had, last August, the courage to complain of this infamous neglect, in the National Institute.  “The youth,” said he, “receive no other instruction but lessons to march, to fire, to bow, to dance, to sit, to lie, and to impose with a good grace.  I do not ask for