printed against him in secret, and circulated
openly just before the Revolution; the most
levelling of now-a-day demagogues would deem
those writings infamous, and would regret that
the authors escaped unpunished.

On the 26th of August, 1789, six weeks after
the razing of the Bastile, the National Assembly
decreed the freedom of the press. On
the 17th of March, 1791, the profession of
printer was made free, and on the 14th of
September of the same year the Constituent
Assembly, ratifying the decree of the 26th of
August, 1789, proclaimed, " that freedom of
speech was part of the birthright of man, and
that every one was entitled to speak, to write,
and to publish his thoughts, without either
restriction or impediment." This was a noble
declaration; but we are forced to own, at the
same time, that it was premature;  men's minds
were not yet prepared for such boundless liberty,
and the numerous journals that sprung into life
at that period (Marat's Ami du Peuple, and
the Père Duchesne, especially) indicate too well
that liberty to be good and useful should be
kept within reasonable and honest bounds.

It is needless, of course, to remark that
although the Press was in principle free during
all the Reign of Terror, it enjoyed but a very
shaky sort of liberty under Robespierre, and
was not much better off under the reign of the
five " Directors." Camille Desmoulins, the
friend of Danton, was beheaded solely for his
articles in Le Vieux Cordelier, and countless
other journalists were guillotined for much less
than that. In 1795, August 22, there was a
new decree in favour of the liberty of the press;
but two years later, on the occasion of the coup
d'état of the 18th Fructidor (4th September,
1797), when the three Directors—Barras,
Rewbel, and Lareveillère-Lepeaux—exiled their
colleagues, Barthelemy and Carnot, and
sentenced fifty-three members of the two legislative
tive bodies to transportation, the press was laid
for a year under the supervision of the police,
and on the 26th August following this term
was prolonged by another year.

The licentiousness of tone in the newspapers
had considerably decreased by this time;
criticism had become more moderate, and
consequently more effective; statesmen began to feel
the terrible power that is wielded by a well-
conducted gazette, and the Directory, which
had been at the best of times but a lame sort of
government, grew frightened at the clamours
raised by the press for the restoration of its
liberties. By an executive decree of the 1st of
August, 1799, all the restrictive laws were
repealed, and for the next few months newspapers
were free to speak as they chose. At first,
Napoleon—who, on the 18th Brumaire (9th of
November, 1799), had overturned the Directory
and established the Consulate—did not interfere
with this freedom, very probably because the
newspapers were all more or less loud in their
admiration of him; but by the commencement
of the year 1800 the promulgation of the
consular constitution (13th of December, 1799) had
somewhat cooled public enthusiasm, and
Bonaparte, irritated by the just protestations evoked
by his tyrannical administration, issued the
decree of the 17th of January, by which all the
papers in Paris, with the exception of thirteen,
were suppressed. Shortly after, one of these
thirteen, L'Ami des Lois, shared the fate for
having spoken irreverently of the Institute.

From this date down to that of the overthrow
of the Empire in 1814, the press was completely
at the mercy of the ministers of police. For a
word spoken out of season a journal incurred
suppression; and those amongst gazetteers who
were suspected of favouring the designs of the
royalist or republican factions were thrown into
prison without mercy, and left to meditate there
until it pleased M. Fouché or M. Savary to
release them. And yet (and this was the worst
of it) the press was nominally free. The laws
of the 1st of August, 1799, were never formally
repealed during the Empire, and injured
newspapers had, in consequence, no means of obtaining
redress when they petitioned against arbitrary
grievances. " We cannot help you," the
judges were obliged to say; " the law declares
you free; if, therefore, you are gagged by the
government, it is illegally; you must apply to
the emperor." Napoleon, on his side, used to
declare, with the best faith possible, that the
papers were as free as the air. Some weeks
after the victory of Austerlitz he caused the
following announcement to be made in the
Moniteur: " There exists no censorship in
France. We should fall into a pretty state again
if a common clerk could forbid the publication
of a book, or force the author to make alterations
in it. Thought is free throughout the
French empire." . . . .

Notwithstanding this bright assurance, a
decree of the 5th of February, 1810, restored the
institution of the censors, such as they had
existed under Louis the Sixteenth; and on the
3rd of August of the same year an imperial order
suppressed a few hundred newspapers at a
stroke, by establishing that in future there
should be but one gazette in each department
(except that of the Seine), and that this solitary
paper should be under the authority of the
prefect. The purport of this law was evident;
it placed all discussion under an interdict, and
from that moment the Press became virtually
dumb. Napoleon grew more reckless as his
prosperity increased, and there is something
overbearingly insolent in the haughty defiance
he hurled at all justice during the years that
immediately preceded his misfortunes. One
cannot ask oneself, without a feeling of alarm,
into what moral condition the French people
would have fallen had the reign of this extraordinary
man been prolonged. France gained
more by his fall than she had ever won by his
victories. Austerlitz brought the French a
great deal of glory, but Waterloo gave back to
them their moral independence.

From 1815 to 1830 the French press underwent
various periods of partial liberty and partial
despotism, but on the whole—especially