Education will correct deficiencies and supply the power of self-government.

Far be it from us to enter into the particulars of legislation; let the guardians take care of education, and education will take care of all other things.
But without education they may patch and mend as they please; they will make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks to cure himself by some favourite remedy and will not give up his luxurious mode of living.
If you tell such persons that they must first alter their habits, then they grow angry; they are charming people.

'Charming,--nay, the very reverse.' Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good graces, nor the state which is like them.

And such states there are which first ordain under penalty of death that no one shall alter the constitution, and then suffer themselves to be flattered into and out of anything; and he who indulges them and fawns upon them, is their leader and saviour.
'Yes, the men are as bad as the states.' But do you not admire their cleverness?
'Nay, some of them are stupid enough to believe what the people tell them.' And when all the world is telling a man that he is six feet high, and he has no measure, how can he believe anything else?
But don't get into a passion: to see our statesmen trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play.

Minute enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad ones.
And now what remains of the work of legislation?
Nothing for us; but to Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all things--that is to say, religion.