Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/59

 Ministers. This custom afterwards lapsed ; but the Right frequently encouraged Ambassadors to depart from the reserve imposed on them by their functions. At the Congress of Laybach, besides the official plenipotentiaries, there appeared (not at the actual sittings, but in the social reunions) M. dc Jouffroi, the agent of the " Pavilion Marsan," who discussed with the Emperor of Russia the utility of " enfeebling the constitutional Governments of the Continent."

The Right openly entertained retrograde theories. "In the matter of Education," says Chancellor Pasquier, "two fixed ideas dominated the most exalted sections of the Royalist faction : one, that very little education was necessary for the people ; the other, that this little should be given to it by the clergy." Nothing very serious or very astonishing in that, we may say. Education is spread in spite of the efforts of obscurantists. But it was astonishing to see a whole party deliberately labouring to make itself unpopular, to raise obstacles between itself and public opinion, and compromise by imprudence and absolutely futile violence the cause it wished to serve and the principles it meant to defend.