[The Origins of Contemporary France Volume 6 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link bookThe Origins of Contemporary France Volume 6 (of 6) CHAPTER III 53/92
Thus one fifth of the parents do not want the secular system for their children; at least, they prefer the other when the other is offered to them; but, to offer it to them, very large donations, a multitude of voluntary subscriptions, are necessary.
The distrust and aversion which this system, imposed from above excites can be measured by the number of parents and children and by the greatness of the donations and subscriptions.
Note, moreover, that in many of the other communes, in all places where the resources, the common understanding and the generosity of individual founders and donators are not sufficient, the parents, even distrustful and hostile, are now constrained to send their children to the school which is repugnant to them .-- In order to be more precise, imagine an official and daily journal entitled Secular journal, obligatory and gratuitous for children from six to thirteen, founded and supported by the State, at an average cost of 582,000,000 francs to set it agoing, and 131,0000,000 francs of annual expenditure, the whole taken from the purses of taxpayers, willingly or not; take it for granted that the 6,000,000 children, girls and boys, from six to thirteen, are forced subscribers to this journal, that they get it every day except Sundays, that, every day, they are bound to read the paper for six hours.
The State, through toleration, allows the parents who do not like the official sheet to take another which suits them; but, that another may be within reach, it is necessary that local benefactors, associated together and taxed by themselves, should be willing to establish and support it; otherwise, the father of a family is constrained to read the secular journal to his children, which he deems badly composed and marred by superfluities and shortcomings, in brief edited in an objectionable spirit.
Such is the way in which the Jacobin State respects the liberty of the individual. On the other hand, through this operation, it has extended and fortified itself; it has multiplied the institutions it directs and the persons whom it controls.
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