The most important work he accomplished during this period was the organization of primary instruction. It was to the efforts of Cousin that France owed her advance, in relation to primary education, between 1830 and 1848. Prussia and Saxony had set the national example, and France was guided into it by Cousin. Forgetful of national calamity and of personal wrong, he looked to Prussia as affording the best example of an organized system of national education; and he was persuaded that "to carry back the education of Prussia into France afforded a nobler (if a bloodless) triumph than the trophies of Austerlitz and Jena." In the summer of 1831, commissioned by the government, he visited Frankfurt and Saxony, and spent some time in Berlin. The result was a series of reports to the minister, afterwards published as "Rapport sur l'Etat de l'instruction publique dans quelques pays de l'Allemagne et particulièrement en Prusse" (Compare also "De l'instruction publique en Hollande", 1837) His views were readily accepted on his return to France, and soon afterwards through his influence there was passed the law of primary instruction. (See his "Exposé des motifs et projet de loi sur l'instruction primaire, présentés à la chambre des députés", "séance du 2 janvier 1837".)