Cushing to Hamilton Fish, June 7, 1875

No. 536. Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.

Sir: I annex hereto copy and translation of a decree of the 4th instant, on the subject of unofficial, as distinguished from official, instruction. It is complementary to the decree communicated and commented on in my No. 345, and further elucidated in my No. 354; and while it serves to confirm the appreciations of the question set forth in those dispatches, it completes the contradiction of the misrepresentations on the subject which a few busy persons, interested in maintaining abuses, had propagated in Paris and London. Prior to the issue of these decrees, public instructions in Spain and preparation for professional pursuits were in the same state of anarchy, imperfectly attempered by occasional spasms of arbitrariness, with everything else in Spain. What was called free instruction was a mere cover for the fabrication of advocates, physicians, and other professional persons who were making display of degrees gained without serious study, and who, while destitute of any real instruction, were imposing themselves on the community, to its prejudice and to that of all true science and merit. The evil attained such proportions that while the competition for professional employment had enormously increased, it had become the practice for the government and the municipalities, in advertising for applications, to give notice of the exclusion of aspirants of this class. The present decree, while it completes the system of professional instruction, legalizing private institutions in which all persons are free to teach and to learn outside of the official institutions, makes provision to guard against the abuse of mercenary trade in diplomas on the part of self-constituted professors, who have not taught, and pretended students who have not learned, while otherwise leaving the entire field of knowledge open to all the worlds unembarrassed by the limitations which rightfully apply to the public institutions maintained by the state.

I have, &c.,