Jules Simon has described this speech as “at once a law and a book,” and Renan says it is “the most remarkable theory of public instruction that has ever been propounded in France.” It is certainly a wonderful vision, in its general outline, of the education of the future. No doubt thinkers and reformers of all schools were working for a reform of education. The clergy themselves were prepared on the eve of the States-General to respond to the demand for progress. But only a few in France were fully acquainted with the views of the expert thinkers, and Talleyrand did a fine piece of work in thus presenting them. Unfortunately, a firework of applause was all that he could obtain. The subject was deferred—for ten years, as it turned out. The sadly imperfect education of the earlier regime was succeeded by the complete absence of it during the Revolution. Talleyrand had to wait for the genius of Napoleon to make a beginning with his scheme. It is growing near to realization in the twentieth century.
On the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly broke up. It had at length completed the constitution. Those who think lightly of its work, who see only its constitution-committee, and that on its vulnerable side, may be asked to conceive France without it during those two years and a half; as well try to conceive Paris in some order without Lafayette and his National Guard. But what it did, and what its constitution was worth, and how anarchy had grown too strong before it was given—all these things are told in the larger story of the Revolution. One thing it did that affected Talleyrand. It bound its members to refrain from taking office or commission or gift or pension for two years. “Greenish” Robespierre had proposed this. As a consequence the nation was deprived of the service of its most trained and expert governors and administrators. A special gallery was appointed from which they might witness the proceedings of the new Legislative Assembly, and be able to afford friendly hints in private; but a vast amount of talent was wasted at a critical period. So slow and delicate had been the transfer of executive power, so dazzling the new ideal of liberty to the emancipated, so strong and daring the self-assertion of mobs, so skilled the art of the demagogue, that the air was thick with dangers. It would need all the sound heads and steady arms in France to launch that new Constitution safely on such waters; and they began by turning the majority of the soundest and steadiest away.