THE DEBATE ON PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.
SPEECH OF M. DE MONTALEMBERT.
M. De Montalembert — Gentlemen, the hon. member who preceded me has reproached the law now before us with not saying all it means to say ; he has referred us to his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, to take from him some lessons of openness in his Ukases. I think this reproach unjust; but even though it were just, it will disappear, I hope, after you have done me the honor of listening to me, for I am going to make you understand all that the law means to say, or, at least, all that I think it ought to say.For twenty years I have carried on war against the official education, whose apology you have heard to-day, and for one year I have been negotiating with the old defenders of this education a treaty of peace, which is at the present moment submitted to your approval. I have occasion to justify to you both that war and that peace— that is to say, to explain to you the nature of the evil, and the nature of the remedy.
In the first place, as to the evil, allow me to have recourse to your classical recollections, to unfold all my thoughts on this subject. You have, probably all of you, construed Livy as I have done, and you have, all of you, forgotten him as I have done. (Laughter.) But, however, the other day, in reading him over again, I found an historical passage, which appeared to me conveniently to express our position, the part recently played by public instruction in France. You recollect the siege of Falerii by the Roman army, under Camillus? Whilst that city was besieged by the Romans, the master to whose care were entrusted the noblest of the Faliscan youth, conducted them unawares as far as the advanced posts of the hostile camp, and delivered them to the besiegers. Well ; that, I do not hesitate to say to you, was precisely what has been done in France by public education. (Protests on the Left.) I do not speak of individuals ; I set aside exceptions; I know very many honourable instances of such ; l am only speaking of the general spirit of the institution, and I say that that great institution has delivered up the French youth to the besieger, to the enemy that is besieging our French society. Under the restoration, the monopoly of public education made what were called in those days Liberals and Revolutionaries ; under the regime of July, it made Republicans, and under the Republic it has made Socialists. The president said to us, the other day, that it was very difficult to define Socialism. I am going to attempt to define it ; or, at least, I am going to attempt to explain what I mean by Socialism.
On the left.— Ah ! let us see !
M.de Montalembert— You are going to see. I am persuaded, that after having heard me, there is not one of you who will be tempted to complain of a personal attack. I mean by Socialism, in practice, the party which on the morrow of the revolution of February, wished to substitute the red banner for the tricolour ; the party which on the 19th of May, broke into this house, drove us out, and proclaimed an impost of a million on the rich ; the party which, on the 24th of June, 1848, gave battle to society, and cost us more general officers than did the rout of Beresina or that of Waterloo; the party which, on the 13th of June last, placed us out of the pale of; the law, and which now proclaims, whilst waiting for something better, the abolition of the impost and the abolition of capital; the party, in fine, which unfortunately is daily making fresh recruits among men of discontented ambition, of wounded vanity, of shattered fortunes, impatient, all of them, to seize the first opportunity of carrying society by a coup-de-main. That is what I call Socialism in practice. (Hear, hear.)
But, by the side of this, there is Socialism in theory— that is to say, the spirit which is never satisfied with anything, which makes of every reform a pretext or an occasion of revolution ; which, immediately after 1789, insisted on 1792 and 1793; which, immediately after the revolution of July, insisted on the Republic; and which, immediately after the Democratic and Constitutional Republic, is demanding the Social Republic, that is to say, the dissolution of society. That is what I call Socialism in theory. I know that they call all that, the spirit of progress and the spirit of life. For my part, I call it the spirit of ruin and the spirit of death, and, to give it its true name, the revolutionary spirit. (Movement.)
Be well assured that by the revolutionary spirit, I do not at all mean the spirit which applies itself to the defence of such and such a conquest, made by the modern revolutions, of such and such results, acceptable to, and accepted by all, achieved by the modern revolutions ; no, the spirit which I am pointing out, far from maintaining those results, compromises them, menaces them, disgusts the people with them, and tends to cause in them a violent reaction towards despotism. This is what I call the revolutionary spirit. Well, gentlemen, I hold for my part that we have been sent here — we the majority— (and without wishing the least in the world to beneficient in respect to the minority, I may observe that it is not my intention to address myself to it to-day) — we have been sent here, we the majority, to fight with Socialism, to fight with the revolutionary spirit, to fight with it in laws, and to fight with it in ideas.
Gentlemen, since I became a member of this House, you will bear me witness, as you are bound to do, that I have associated myself with all the measures which have been proposed and adopted against Socialism, Even before the explosion of the 24th of June I ascended this tribune for the first time, there to combat the first apparition of Socialism in the law for the confiscation of the railways. The other day again I voted with you a law, which, as I may be allowed to state, now that it has passed, did not inspire me with a perfect confidence, I mean the law against the primary instructors. I have then associated myself to all the remedies which have been proposed in this place against the encroachments of Socialism ; I have associated myself to all the obstacles which have been opposed to it ; it was my duty to do so, because such were the instructions I received from my constituents. But I have always said— and even when I have not said it aloud I have still had it in mind, —I have always thought that these remedies would be insufficient and in adequate, unless people were disposed to add to them; to support them by a remedy of another order which should go to the root of the evil, which should go to the foundation of the business. Such a remedy we conceive that we lay before you, in part at least, this day, and it consists in restoring religion to education by means of liberty. This is what we have attempted to do in our law, and this is what we regard as the first and most important of the remedies for the evil which I have just now indicated.
I do not profess to demonstrate this evil to those who deny it; but I do profess to characterise it to those who admit it, and who perhaps do not take sufficient account of it. That evil is before your eyes ; and I think that since the Revolution of February it ought to be evident to all. In speaking of the Revolution of February, it is not of the fact alone of the Revolution that I speak; it is of the social state which has been revealed to us by the Revolution of February, and which has been subsisting ever since. Now these symptoms prove to us that the experiment attempted by the State in the matter of education, that the monopoly of instruction exercised by the State; has succeeded badly. It is impossible to deny it, the youth have risen against society and against ourselves. Public instruction, as it is conducted in France, fosters an innumerable swarm of ambitions, vanities, and cupidities, the pressure of which is crushing society. It developes factitious wants, which it is impossible to satisfy. It divides the majority of those whom it brings up into two great categories, the middling and the discontented ; and it creates a crowd of disciples who belong to both categories at once. It creates a multitude of pretenders, who are fit for everything and good for nothing. And this is not only true of primary instruction — it is equally true, and perhaps more so, of secondary instruction. I ask permission to quote for you on this subject, a passage from a remarkable work, which has been lately published by the son of one of our most illustrious colleagues, M. de Broglie. This is the way in which he describes the baccalaureat: — " The diploma of bachelor," says he, " is a bill endorsed by society, and payable sooner or later in public functions ; if it is not paid when it falls due, we then are subjected to that distraining for payment, which they call a revolution !" (Movement on the Left; on the Right, 'Very true!') In fact, gentlemen, that is so true, that there has not been a Government in our time able to resist the attacks of the generation which it has itself brought up. Scarcely has it finished the bringing up of a generation, in the space of fifteen or twenty years, but that generation rises again it and overturns it. Is that the fault of the University only? I do not think so.
M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire.— You reckon for nothing, then, the faults committed by Government in two revolutions ?
M. de Montalembert.— I beg M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire will allow me to finish what I was going to say. I should have wished to reply to him, and to take up the scholastic side of the question, as he put it— viz., the question of the basis of studies. But time and strength would fail me at this moment ; we shall find ourselves on that ground later on ; I wish to limit myself to the political side of the question.
I say, that this state of society is not the fault of the University only; it is the fault, in a great measure, of fathers of families ; it is the fault, I must not say of the stupidity, but of the blindness of fathers of families, who remove their children out of their right place and class, by the unnatural education they choose to give them. (Ironical laughter on the left; on the right, "Very true ! very practical !") . The fault is owing, in a great measure, to society in general, to the atmosphere which it breathes, and as I just now said, to the blindness, to the ambition of fathers of families, who give an education to their children, for what reason? To be able afterwards to fling them on public functions, that is to say, on the budget, as upon a prey. This is what you see every day. (True ! true ! — Loud applause on the right;) The result, in fine, is what I have just told you ; it is that each government educates generations which overturn it when they arrive at their maturity ; and whence arises this cruel infirmity of our age? I do not hesitate to tell you, with the frankness which the hon. member was just now asking for, that it arises from the fact that, in public education, people suppress the sentiment of reverence for authority, for the authority of God in the first instance. (Movement.) It is not voluntarily, I am not accusing here the intentions of any person, but behold the result, which is, that in public education, there is extinguished— the reverence for authority, for the authority of God in the first instance. (Movement.) It is not voluntarily. I am not accusing here the intentions of any person, but behold the result, which is, that in public, education, there is extinguished— the reverence due to God, the reverence, due to the father, that is to say, to the family, and lastly, the reverence due to power, or to the state. Among, us, youth are taught knowledge and not duty ; they are taught, as you have more than once expressed it, to emancipate the reason, but do you know what is emancipated along with it in their minds? Pride! (Agitation.) They extinguish humility— humility, which is the basis of all the virtues, public and private ; and in consequence of emancipating this reason, or rather this pride, we have arrived at our present position, and at a problem we discern to he insoluble even before stating it — viz., to find the means of making the maintenance of social authority co-exist with the general emancipation of pride, disguised under the name of reason !
Well, we come forward to propose the remedy for this state of things; which remedy is to make religion re-enter education by the means of liberty ; as I said just now, to make it re-enter there ; not to extinguish the reason (as people madly, if not calumniously, pretend) ; not to extinguish the reason, but to regulate, to discipline, to illuminate, and to purify that faculty ! Now, gentlemen, where at present, to justify our attempt, where at present is seated the defence of order, of social order, nay, of material order ? Will you tell me where that defence resides ? People have believed for a very long time, that the maintenance of society and civilisation (for it is civilisation itself that is threatened, be well assured of that) — people have believed that the maintenance of French society and civilisation rested on two bases ; one, the indefinite division of property ; the other, primary instruction.
As to the indefinite division of property, it has certainly done much, and assisted much the defence of social order ; still I am not convinced , for my own part, that this obstacle to evil will hold out and exist much longer. But as to primary instruction, I think that after the debates the other day on the law directed against the instructors; after the revelations brought forward at the Tribune on the testimony supplied by the chief of public instruction, and by men competently acquainted with this subject, we have no longer the right to reckon seriously on the efficaciousness of this means as an obstacle to the progress of the barbarism which threatens us ! Who is it, then, that defends order and property in our country districts? Is it the instructor, who has been so long caressed and petted by the proprietors, by the Bourgeois, as they are called now a-days ? No! We must say no, setting aside exceptions, very many of them, as many as we please. Who is it, then, that defends order, often without saying to himself that he does it, but instinctively and with an admirable force and perseverance ? We must proclaim the truth — it is the Curé. (Ironical laughter on the left— approval on the right.) That is the root of the matter, gentlemen ; on this I, above all, insist:; it is the most vital part of the question. (Yes, yes !) I say, that at the present day the Curé, the clergy in general, and the country clergy in particular, the priests having the charge of souls, represent order, even for those who do not believe, even for those who do not avail themselves of them. As people said under the restoration, they represent at once social order, political order, and material order.
There are in France two armies, as has often been said at this tribune— two armies in battle array against each other. Each of them consists of 30 or 40,000 men — I mean the army of instructors and the army of the Curés, Well, once more — not to revert to what has so often been stated and demonstrated at this tribune— I ask whether it is the army of instructors that defends order? There are among them some very good, indeed, I know myself, there are some excellent men among them; but there is among them a much greater number of mediocre men, and, as a whole, the body, I believe, is now judged. (Ironical laughter on the left. — A Voice on the Left —And executed?) Of whom is the second army composed, the army arrayed against them? Of these 30,000 or 40,000 country Curés there are some bad ones among them — (Voice on the left, " many !")— there are some of them, I must admit, and the more so because you know it, who are infected with what people call democratic and social Catholicism, and that is something even worse than the democratic and social Republic, if that be possible. (Long and loud laughter on the benches of the right.) There are also many of them middling men. I do not set them all up for saints nor for angels, if you want that ; but I say that, taken as a whole, the body is excellent —that it works admirably in its social mission (for I am not speaking here of its religious mission, on which you have not to judge,) but admirably in the interest of society; and I ask every enlightened inhabitant of the country districts whether it is not the bulwark and the safeguard of society in our land? (On the right— "True! true!') Here is a statement of facts, conclusive in my opinion, as to primary instruction. But allow me to say that it would be a great error to suppose that the evil is limited to the regions of primary instruction ; it exists to quite as great an extent in those of secondary instruction, and that is the reason why we have incessantly attacked it. In those quarters they do not profess Socialism, but they profess what in my opinion comes to the same thing. Scepticism and Rationalism, for what is called Scepticism and Rationalism above, is called Socialism below. Too often professors are for cities what instructors are for villages, and to translate this assertion into fact, I would only remind you of the twenty or thirty professors of the body engaged in instruction; I do not mean of the body of primary instructors; but of what is called the corps Universitaire, who were more or less compromised in the various ramifications of the affairs of the 13th of June. I have besides in proof of this the recent circular, which you might all have read, sent by the Minister of Public Instruction to the rectors, where he points out the evil which exists in secondary instruction, and the means of repression granted to him by the law, as far as relates to primary instruction. Allow me on this subject a complete liberty. After having spoken against the Reds, as they are called, allow me also to say something against the Whites. (Laughter—' Ah ! ah !') It must be on this condition, that the Whites and the Reds do not coalesce against myself. (Mirth.) The Whites, in the popular sense of the word, are nearly synonymous with the Bourgeois, (Loud dissent on the left.)
M. Charamavle, — You mean Legitimists. (Long agitation.)
M. de Montalembert.— Well, gentlemen, let us lay aside those colored epithets, and take the ordinary and popular designation, that of Bourgeois. That is what 1 mean to say : I here speak of Bourgeois, that is to say, of all of us ; that is to say, especially of the class from whence comes the Assembly, before which I have the honour to speak. It appears to me that we are essentially an Assembly of Bourgeois. I have not yet met in this Assembly with sincere working men, with those eloquent working men whom they promised us, who were to come out with universal suffrage ; I have not yet perceived, them —(murmurs of dissent)— any more than I have perceived here feudal lords, or knights armed cap-a-pied. I see here none but what we all are, in the habitual and modern sense of the word — Bourgeois. Well, then, I say we have all of us contributed to the evil which now terrifies us : for we have all of us, more or less, by our attitude, by our examples, by our teachings, propagated that rationalism and scepticism, which, changing its atmosphere and its theatre, has become Socialism.
But, this is what I add for the consolation of the French Bourgeois, that to them is given, by a special grace from on High, the means of repairing the evil they have done. They may still repair it; and rare indeed, it is that one can, in this world, repair the evil one has done in the field of politics. They can do it on two conditions; on the condition of curing themselves, and afterwards of taking heed of this evil. And here I do not imagine they will find any difficulty, after the cruel warning which they received in February, and which they still receive every day. In fact, let us never forget, gentlemen, this society, so disdainful of all spiritual succour, so proud of itself ; this society, which dates, on so just a title, from 1789 ; which believed itself so sure of its future, of its grandeur, of its prosperity ; what, gentlemen, has befallen it? To be undermined, shaken, menaced, assaulted, conquered in a single day, in the twinkling of an eye, by men whom it did not pay the compliment of fearing them. At this day, what is it that menaces so civilised and intelligent a society? Who are they that menace it, and who are they that inspire it with such just alarm, an alarm expressed, as we have been reproached with, in almost all the measures we have had to vote? Who are they that menace it? Not austere and pure men, like the martyrs of old, who destroyed the force of the Pagan world, by introducing Christianity into it. Assuredly not. Are they even such grand criminals as those who overturned the old French society, and created the Republic of 1793? (Loud and long interruption on some benches of the extreme left.)
A Voice on the Right— Yes ; criminals, but not grand.
A Voice on the Left— Are the criminals the men of 1815.
The President. —They had changed colours then.
Another Voice on the Left —Are the criminals the Jesuits.
M. de Monlalembert— Nothing like it; society is menaced by conspirators of the lower orders, and by frightful little rhetoricians, whose mediocrity is as indisputable as unhappily it is dangerous ; it is overturned by men whose success and influence will be, in the eyes of history, the most incomprehensible phenomenon of our age, (Approbation on the Right.) And what follows? What is it that society is occupied in maintaining against those frightful little rhetoricians? (Mirth.) Must I tell you ? (A Voice on the left : You are however tolerably afraid of them.) Oh ! you may well say so. I am indeed afraid, excessively afraid of them, and it is because I desire that France may not fall under their yoke. But what are we occupied in maintaining against them? Is it, perchance, some refinement of civilization, some indefinite perfection of political or constitutional liberty? No, no ; you all know on the contrary, that it is the A B C of social life, the first elements of civilised life, of social life, property and the family. This it is that France has been condemned to defend for two years by all the efforts of force and reasoning. It is to this cause that the Hon. M. Thiers has been obliged to consecrate all his pains. (Interruption on the Left.) — the Hon. M. Charles Dupin, all the resources of his statistical science! and the whole Academy of the Moral Sciences, were convoked by the chief of the Executive Power, to answer these men on those elementary questions, on what savage people, scarcely emerged from the life of barbarism, proclaim and maintain ! Behold what it is that France, arrived as we have been told, at the apogee of civilisation and progress, in the middle of the nineteenth century, has been obliged, and is still obliged, every day to defend ! (Loud applause on the Right.) If a lesson is not there for the French Bourgeois and the whole of French society, and if it does not profit by it, I know not either when or where, how it will discover one of more utility, (Applause,)
Gentlemen, believe me, I was very far from wishing to pursue or denounce here what I just now called scepticism and rationalism in the secret of the heart. Nothing is farther from my thoughts. When occasionally I meet souls possessed with that class of ideas, I bow myself with compassion, and even with that sort of respect (I know not if I use the word rightly) which is inspired by some great misfortune or great indigence. God forbid, then,that I should come here to-day to pursue in the secret of the heart, and to denounce this great vice of the intellect. No, but what I do attack is the propagation of that vice ; it is what a man with whom I long contended — a late Minister of Public Instruction, M. de Salvandy, speaking to the elite of the French youth at a distribution of prizes — so justly described as that "proselytism of unbelief and cruel courage of trying to wrest from the youthful mind those objects of faith which fortify and console, without having anything to put in their place." It is this I attack and denounce to you, and fear not to characterise it as the principal cause of the deplorable state of things you are called upon to cure, if there be yet time for it. What M. de Salvandy said in regard to youth I say in regard to the people ; that is to say the laborious and indigent classes ; I say that it is a pitiless cruelty to wish to take and to have taken from them, objects of faith which consoled them, without having been able to put anything into their place. Their object in encouraging, in propagating, in supporting all those impure romances, all those bad journals, all those literary men, all those dramatists who have depraved the taste and defiled the soul of France. (" Hear, hear," on the Right— Interruption on the Left,)
A Voice on the Left — The Constitutionnel.
M. de Montalembert — Be it so, but the old one. Their object was only to destroy religious faith, and they have destroyed, without intending it, social faith. (Assent on the Right.) Yes, it is true — it is but too true ! And do you know what has been the consequence? It is that, without intending it, they have given to the people Socialism instead of religion ; because the people must have a religion — you all say so. Well, when they have taken from them the old religion, when they have taken from them their faith in the God-made man of the Gospel, do you know what they have substituted for that? There has been substituted the faith in the man-made God of Socialism. (Noise and laughter on the Left — Applause on the Right.) For what, at bottom, is Socialism ? it is man believing himself to be God, in such a sense that he believes himself to be capable of destroying evil and suffering. ("Hear, hear," on the Right — Exclamations on the Left.) Yes, gentlemen — (interruption on the Left.)— Pardon me, gentlemen, I am not saying anything which can be construed personally against any gentlemen whomsoever in this house. (Speak, speak.) I am asking you to do what, you have already done more than once for me, and that is, to have the goodness to listen to me in silence, and not to augment the difficulties of my task ; it is sufficiently serious to deserve at least silence, even though it be the silence of disapproval.
Doubtless, gentlemen, it would have been more convenient to stop in the mid-course — to keep to scepticism and rationalism. That food might agree with those disdainful and delicate minds whom formerly they used to call esprits forts; but it is a food which does not agree with, the masses; they cannot and will not stop there ; they overturn and demolish at once that frail edifice of the mere negative reason ; they precipitate themselves from the summits of truth to the bottom of the abysses of error. (Hear, hear, on the Right.) That is why they would not stop at the mid way point which was proposed to them, and they rushed into Socialism. Their old faith in God had been destroyed, but they straightway made themselves another— the faith in man— that is to say, Socialism. (Renewed applause on the Right.) Yes, gentlemen, there is some thing yet more absurd than Socialism, and that is, the pretence of maintaining a society without dogmas— without faith— without supernatural and spiritual articles of belief. Well, such has been the pretence of a very great number of enlightened and powerful men among all classes of the country. This was that something, more absurd and more insensate still than Socialism, and this was what produced the state in which we now find ourselves. (Renewed applause on the Right.) The Hon. M. Pierre Leroux said to us one day, at this tribune, that there was no medium— that we were obliged to choose, in point of doctrines, between Socialism and Jesuitism, Well, I accept this alternative, with an amendment, however ; and in place of Jesuitism, which our hon. President said with reason, the other day, was very difficult to define, I propose to you a term which all the world will comprehend and accept.
There is no medium, I say with the Hon. M. Pierre Leroux, between Socialism and the Catechism. (Exclamations on the Left ; laugh of approbation an the Right. It is not, then Jesuitism, it is the Catechism that I propose to you.
A Voice on the Left— What ?
Yes ! the Cathechism. It is not, indeed, the whole of society, but without it there is no society, and there is Socialism, Behold, then, the two poles, between which, by the admission of your friends as well as your enemies, you, the majority, are obliged to make your election. Now, are you aware of the great service which the Church will render to the French people, by education, if she can resume the functions which belong to her — by education and by the Catechism? Are you aware of the great service which she will render to the people— to us all? That service is this ; She will not flatter us ! She will not guess, as they do every day, all our bad inclinations ; she will not consecrate the apotheosis of our desires ; she will not go to seek, in I know not what contraband theology or absurd philosophy, an apology for all the bad passions of humanity. This is what the Church will never do ; she will not flatter the evil which lies at the bottom of all our hearts, and which they so pitilessly flatter at the present day, (Long applause on the Right,)
No, Gentlemen, on the contrary, she will say every day to those who have so much need of her in all her ranks of society, she will say to man— Thou art dust, and thy whole life must be a series of sufferings and struggles, the reward of which is not here below, she will say to him that he comes out of nothing, and that he must mistrust his inclinations, and curb them down. This is what, she will say to society, to the people; it is the greatest service that can be rendered to modern society. (Loud applause on the benches of the Majority— Murmurs on the Left.) She does yet more for the people ; she places in the recess of each man's conscience all the conditions of her government of states. She makes of his soul, of the soul of each of us, the type of a true government, the image of a society ordered as she is herself. Such is the function of the Church in education. She creates the model of every government in the human soul ; she teaches man to reconcile the Divine liberty of choosing between good and evil, which he has received with life, and the authority to which he is obliged to submit the exercise of that liberty. (Approbation on the Right.) Behold the service which the Church will render to education, and to every member of society by education. With this, it will be possible for you to have a peaceable people, and believe me, that under the Republic, as under despotism, the first social necessity is to have a governable people ; whereas, at the present day, it is ungovernable. (Murmurs of dissent.) It was for this reason that an illustrious cotemporary —who has already been quoted in this discussion, M. Guizot, could say that Catholicism is "the greatest school of reverence that exists here below." Well, I ask of you, Gentlemen, whether the first want of our modern society be not reverence for the law, reverence for order, reverence for power, reverence for society, and reverence for property ! Is there any want more acknowledged— more incontestable than this?
A Voice — And reverence for oneself even.
M. de Montalembert— Quite right and reverence for oneself. Go, then, to the school where this reverence is to be found. It is to the school of the Church. You have heard the definition of the remedy ; hear then the definition of the evil. The definition of the evil has been given by a man whom we have had as a colleague, the Honourable M. Proudhon. I confess that I have had some taste for that writer. (Laughter.) I say I have had some taste for that writer, and the reason why is, that he holds a torch in his hand, and by shaking that torch, he lightens up the recesses of that gloomy cavern, in which we have been placed now for two years. (Renewed mirth. Loud protests on the Left.) Well this is what he says of democracy. You have heard that that honourable writer established a synonym, which has even sometimes been upheld here, between democracy and Socialism. Therefore, where he speaks of democracy he speaks of Socialism, and vice versa. Now, this is the way he defines democracy—" Democracy is the destruction of every power temporal or spiritual." (Sensation.) I am well aware that this definition cannot be admitted in this house. One must deny it, and one has reason to deny it. But it is unfortunate that the French people have the fault of being a logical people. I call it a fault, because it is faulty to be too logical in politics ; they have the fault of pushing to extremes, by virtue of logic, the consequences of the principles which may be put before them. Beware, then, lest you see in the democracy, which is daily preached to that people, the realisation of the definition given by the Honourable M. Proudhon.
And, besides, another of our colleagues, M. Pierre Leroux, has said, and at this Tribune, that the object of Socialism, which he also confounds with democracy, was the destruction of the very notion of authority. He has further said, that each man ought to be for himself, his own Priest, and his own Emperor.(Laughter.) That at least, is what M. Proudhon imputes to him. I would ask you a slight question. How will you govern a people where these ideas are popular, and spread abroad every day? Well, these ideas, not to be sure in so succinct and crude a shape as that which I have just cited at this Tribune, but expressed more moderately, though not less dangerously, are propagated amongst us by the ministers of official instruction ; that is to say, by the primary instruction on the one side, and by too great a number of members of the corps Universitaire on the other. I here repeat what I have said as to the identity of these two categories ; what the primary instructors are for the peasants, the professors of our colleges are for the upper classes: the former propagating Socialism, the latter propagating what conducts to it, and sometimes even Socialism itself. Listen rather to an avowal made by one of the editors of a collection just now quoted, if I am not mistaken, La Liberte de Penser. This collection is edited by the flower of the University— (laughter)— by professors of the highest rank, by the most distinguished pupils of the Normal Schools, and by the most distinguished professors of the Colleges of Paris. (Various interruptions— A Voice on the Left : " But that is a denunciation !') This is what the chief editor of that review wrote to one of his brethren, to a journal called l' Education Republicaine, a journal I believe openly Socialist; but this is what the chief editor of the Liberte de Penser wrote to it?— " We are not," says he of himself and his brethren—professors, like himself of the University, " either flatterers or ambitious men,"—very well —"or Catholics,"— that is not so good!—(laughter)—"or defenders of Catholicism ; we are democratic Republicans ; to look at us, even a little tinged with Socialism." So much for the identity of the two lines of instruction. (Clamour.)
M. Leon Faucher— What a journal says is not said in the schools. (Agitation.)
M. de Montalembert— Gentlemen, enough of the evil ; I have now to speak to you of the remedy which we conceive ourselves able to apply to it. This remedy consists, as I have already told you, in religious education. And observe, that in reality there are but two kinds of education— religious education or irreligious education ; there are not three. (Approbation.) Every education that is not religious is, by that very fact, irreligious, and cannot be anything else.
[to be concluded in our next.]
Freeman's Journal 11 July 1850,
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