Its poets and
historians had to exalt what we ought to despise. The very words,
_liberty_, _order_, _justice_, _people_, _honour_, _influence_, _&c._,
could not have the same signification at Rome, as they have, or ought to
have, at Paris. How can you expect that all these youths who have been
at university or conventual schools, with Livy and Quintus Curtius for
their catechism, will not understand liberty like the Gracchi, virtue
like Cato, patriotism like Caesar? How can you expect them not to be
factious and warlike? How can you expect them to take the slightest
interest in the mechanism of our social order? Do you think that their
minds have been prepared to understand it? Do you not see that, in order
to do so, they must get rid of their present impressions, and receive
others entirely opposed to them?
B. What do you conclude from that?
F. I will tell you. The most urgent necessity is, not that the State
should teach, but that it should _allow_ education. All monopolies are
detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.
The Law.
The law perverted! The law--and, in its wake, all the collective forces
of the nation--the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper
direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the
tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law
guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly,
this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to
call the attention of my fellow-citizens.
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