How many useless trips would country people be spared, if they knew how to communicate by letter and went about their domestic affairs during this time? How many excellent geniuses are buried and lost among the common people only because of their inability to read the writings of others and to make themselves understood in the same way? The Lacedemonians did not permit fathers and mothers to raise their children according to their whims: they took them and put them into the hands of wise and capable people to make them worthy subjects of the state. We should do the same in our country with (280) regard to the children of the common people who roam the streets until the age of ten or twelve and only learn the craft of vagabonds and beggars, which eventually degenerates into that of thieves, brigands, and bandits to the great harm of public wealth.
Those who have the means to send their children to public schools or to provide them with tutors are not very well served either. Without going into the common flaws of our schools and of their difficult and unpleasant ways of teaching the arts,[^1] which M. de Valange,[^2] among others, has noted very well in his new system of methods, I will only say that with regard to language, the common human instrument for taking into our minds the (281) necessary nourishment,[^3] there is nothing so extraordinary, or better yet so extravagant, than to neglect perfecting our mother tongue. Instead of learning to deliver a fine speech or to write well in our language, we focus first on the dead languages—Latin, Greek, Hebrew— which are impossible to learn perfectly because a number of things that the words and phrases mean no longer exist, and the people who could make them understood are also dead. We torment young people for fifteen or sixteen years to learn these dead languages, and this very precious time for feeding[^4] their minds an infinite number of useful things and for making their bodies agile and fit (282) for the necessary duties for the good of the state passes almost in vain while it could be used for more essential things, as shown very judiciously by M. de Vallange, whose wonderful methods should be embraced and followed by all the public schools. The author, whom I have the honor of knowing very well and in whom I have found a zeal for and a tireless attachment to the public good, is as recommendable to all foreign princes as to his King and country for the useful discoveries for the state’s wealth, which he will even give to the public and of which I have seen a part.
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