“The Revolution had armed France; it was urgent to bestow on her an organization, and to that end the observations which I had made in America and in several parts of Europe were directed. The National Guard was instituted; this was the sole armed force which could maintain internal order without favoring military despotism, and by means of which foreign aggression could be repelled, whilst the ancient governments were reduced to the inability of defending themselves against us, unless they imitated us; or against their subjects, if they ventured to follow our example.” La Fayette was a warm advocate in favor of educating the masses; he often said, “that a good education, physical, moral, and intellectual, was in his opinion the best inheritance that parents could transmit to their children; and he considered it to be their duty to make every sacrifice to insure to their offspring this imperishable advantage, which could not but in time prove conducive to their happiness and that of others.” He expressed to his physician his astonishment that in colleges young people were forced to study the course of different rivers in India or Mexico, whilst no pains were taken to impart to them a knowledge of themselves, by giving them some notions of their own organizations and the exercise of their functions. He was desirous that great pains should be taken with the moral and political education of the people, thus insuring their being well-informed and good citizens. He contended that education was calculated to purify the manners of a nation, and contribute to its happiness. And in proof of his own opinions, La Fayette himself might well have been cited as a type of a perfectly civilized being, whom civilization has improved instead of deteriorating; for he had avoided all its vices, and followed only with undeviating step the path traced by virtue and true liberty. He declared that every member of a well-constituted society should receive an education that might point out to him the path which he ought to pursue between his duties and his rights; and that such an education would prove much more effectual for the prevention than the law was for the repression of disorder. La Fayette considered that labor was the first duty of man living in a social state, as it was only by labor that one’s debt to society could be repaid. He countenanced amusements when they were pure and healthful, and considered them a necessary relaxation from bodily or mental occupations. La Fayette recognized liberty of conscience and was tolerant of all religious beliefs. “If it be a crime,” he declared, “to have preferred civil and religious liberty extended equally to all men and all countries, none is more guilty than myself.”