Excerpt from The Popular Education of France: With Notices of That of Holland and Switzerland

IN the following account of popular education in certain countries of the Continent, the State and its action are occasionally spoken of in a way which, if quite unexplained, is likely, I know, to offend some of my readers, and to surprise others. With many Englishmen, perhaps with the majority, it is a maxim that the State, the executive power, ought to be eu trusted with no more means of action than those which it is impossible to withhold from it; that fit neither would nor could make a safe use of any more extended liberty; would not, because it has in itself a natural instinct of despotism, which, if not jealously checked, would become outrageous could not, because it is, in truth, not at all more enlightened, or fit to assume a lead, than the mass of this enlightened community. Accord ing to the long-cherished convictions of a great many, it is for the public interest that Government should be confined, as far as possible, to the bare and indis pensable functions of a'poiice officer and a revenue collector. It IS to be always the mere delegated hand Of the nation, nev or its Oiiginating head.

N o sensible man will lightly go counter to an opinion firmly held by a great body of his countrymen. He will take for granted, that for any opinion which has taken deep root among a people so powerful, so successful, and so well worthy of respect as the people of this country, there certainty either are, or have been, good and sound reasons. He will venture to impugn such an opinion with real hesitation, and only when he thinks he perceives that the reasons which once supported it exist no longer, or at any rate seem about to disappear very soon. For undoubtedly there arrive periods when, the circumstances and conditions of Government having changed, the guiding maxims of Government ought to change also. J'ai dit souvent, says Mirabeau, admonishing the Court of France in 1790, gu'on devait changer de mani�re de gouverner, lorsque kegouverneme-nt n'est plus le m�me. And these decisive changes in the political situation of a people happen gradually as well as violently. In the Silent lapse of events, says Burke'l', writing in England twenty years before the French Revolution, as material alterations have been insensibly brought about in the policy and character of governments and nations, as those which have been marked by the tumult of public revolutions.

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