By admin 
This dissertation, to which the French Academy awarded an honorable mention in its public session of August 25, 1828, was written when the famous ordinances appeared that a part of the clergy wanted to parody as edicts of persecution. Then we heard the freedom of teaching, the freedom of education, being called upon with great cries by voices that frightened us ; and many said to themselves that these freedoms must be bad, since the usual enemies of so many other freedoms were calling on them for help. The question, however, had not changed .
Others, without speaking out against freedom, fall back on finding it inopportune, and would fear, by agreeing that it is good, to take away from the government something of the force it needs to make the Jesuits bend under the yoke of university laws. May the author of this dissertation be permitted to quote himself, and to report the response he made to this objection, in the month of August 1826 , in motivating his adhesion to the deliberate consultation in favor of the denunciation of M. de Montlosier. It was a question , then as today , of applying against the Jesuits a legislation hostile to freedom. The author expressed himself thus:
It is not to those, it will be said, only those who consent to approve this legislation to declare it applicable. But how can we admit that those who blame it can, with some propriety, push for its application?
To this objection it is easy to make a frank and clear answer.
There is something even more unfortunate than the existence of a bad law: it is that, thanks to a silence which tolerates its non – execution , and which escapes all responsibility, it can weigh on some and spare others. A considerable part of the citizens must not be duped both by the existence of a law and its non-application. To keep a bad law in our codes, except not to apply it , is a great evil; to keep this law in order to apply it arbitrarily , is the most intolerable of judicial calamities.
The Jesuits must submit to our legislation , or .
We expose ourselves to great danger by providing the congregationists and the Jesuits with specious pretexts to evade the prosecution of our law, with the help of forced interpretations . What will come of that ? After having freed themselves, on their own account, from the bonds of the law, they would make their efforts to maintain it in order to bind the rest of the citizens to it. It would then be said to them in vain that they have interpreted it in their favor in the sense of liberty; the law would nevertheless subsist with its text and its original vice .
Instead of thus favouring the natural progress of the Jesuits and letting them escape by half -opening the door of interpretations, it is good that , imprisoned with us in the legislation, they can only become free by breaking it for their advantage and for ours . Anyone who has carefully examined the course of public affairs in recent years will agree that we owe to the right side the acquisition of much political freedom. The example is encouraging. It allows us to hope that the present position of the Jesuits will be worth something to us for religious freedom, for freedom of association , for freedom of education . “
The serious question that the author of this dissertation has only touched upon deserves much further development. Excellent articles have appeared on this subject in the Globe. Three Societies of Paris, the Societies of Elementary Instruction, of Christian Morality and of Teaching Methods , have met to open a competition on freedom of education. It is therefore permissible to hope that this important matter will not be long in being properly treated. It is also announced that the government is busy preparing a bill on public education . May its presentation be delayed until the time when people will finally be generally disabused of the monopoly