614. Circular of Guizot.—In transmitting to teachers the law of June 28, 1833, Guizot had it followed by a celebrated circular, which eloquently stated the proper office of the teacher, his duties and his rights. Here are some passages from it:
“Do not make a mistake here, Sir. While the career of primary instruction may be without renown, its duties interest the whole of society, and it is an occupation which shares the importance attached to public functions.... Universal primary instruction is henceforth to be one of the guarantees of order and social stability.”
The circular next examines the material advantages which the new law assured to teachers, and it continues thus:—
“However, Sir, as I well know, the foresight of the law and the resources at the disposal of public authority, will never succeed in rendering the humble profession of a communal teacher as attractive as it is useful. Society could not reward him who devotes himself to this service for all that he does for it. There is no fortune to gain; there is scarcely any reputation to acquire in the difficult duties which he performs. Destined to see his life spent in a monotonous occupation, sometimes even to encounter about him the injustice and the ingratitude of ignorance, he would often grow disheartened, and would perhaps succumb did he not draw his strength and his courage from other sources than from the prospect of an interest immediate and purely personal. It is necessary that a profound sense of the moral importance of his work sustain and animate him, and that the austere pleasure of having served men and secretly contributed to the public good, become the noble reward which his conscience alone can give. It is his glory to aim at nothing beyond his obscure and laborious condition, to spend himself in sacrifices scarcely counted by those who profit by them, and, in a word, to work for men and to look for his reward only from God.”
615. Progress of Popular Instruction.—It would be an interesting history to relate in detail the progress of popular education in France from the law of 1833 to our day. The public bills of the Republic of 1848, the liberal propositions of Carnot and of Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, the recoil of the law of March 15, 1850, the statu quo of the first years of the Second Empire, then towards the end the praiseworthy efforts and tentatives of Duruy, and, finally, under the Third Republic, the definite and triumphant organization,—all this is sufficiently known and too recent to justify us in dwelling on it here.
For successfully introducing anew into the laws the principles of gratuity, obligation, and secularization, as proclaimed by the French Revolution, not less than a century was necessary. And in particular, the better spirits allowed themselves to be convinced of the need of obligatory instruction only by slow degrees. However, in 1833, Cousin, who reported the law of Guizot to the Chamber of Peers, expressed himself as follows:—
“A law which should make of primary instruction a legal obligation seems to me to be no more above the powers of the legislator than the law on the national guard, and that which you have just made on a forced appropriation for the public good. If reasons of public utility justify the legislator in appropriating private property, why do not reasons of a much higher utility justify him in doing less,—in requiring that children receive the instruction indispensable to every human creature, to the end that he may not become dangerous to himself or to society as a whole?”
Cousin added that the commission of which he was the chairman would not have receded from measures wisely combined to make instruction obligatory, had it not been afraid of provoking difficulties, and, in this way, of postponing a law that was awaited with impatience. The evident necessity of instructing the people, the interests of society, the interests of families and individuals,—all these considerations have insensibly overcome the scruples or the illusions of a false liberality, and it is no longer necessary, to-day, to repeat the eloquent pleas of Carnot in his bill of 1848, of Duruy, and of Jules Simon.
In 1873 Guizot expressed himself as follows:—
“The liberty of conscience and that of families are facts and rights which, in this question, ought to be scrupulously respected and guaranteed; but, under the condition of this respect and of these guarantees, it may happen that the state of society and the state of minds may render legal obligation, in respect of primary instruction, legitimate, salutary, and necessary. This is the condition of things to-day. The movement in favor of obligatory instruction is sincere, serious, national. Powerful examples authorize and encourage it. In Germany, in Switzerland, in Denmark, in most of the American States, primary instruction has this character, and civilization has reaped excellent fruits from it. France and its government have reason to welcome this principle.”