“Now, gentlemen, let us see what were the real necessities of the age in the year 1789. The changes which were suggested by the mature reflection of enlightened men may be fairly regarded as necessities. The Constituent Assembly was merely the interpreter of those necessities when it proclaimed the liberty of religious worship, equality in the eye of the law, the free right of jurisdiction, (every one being amenable to his natural judges,) and the liberty of the press.
“But the Constituent Assembly was not in accordance with the spirit of the age when it instituted a single Chamber; when it destroyed the royal sanction; when it tortured consciences, &c. Yet, notwithstanding the errors of that Assembly, (errors of which I have named only a few, and which were followed by great calamities,) it will enjoy, in the judgment of posterity, the glory of having established the bases of our new public law. The august author of the charter—the monarch who is worthy of France, as France is worthy of him—has consecrated in his noble work the only great principles furnished by the Constituent Assembly.
“Let us take it for granted that laws which are wished for—which are proclaimed to be good and salutary by the most enlightened men of a country, and which have been so proclaimed during a series of years—are necessities of the age. One of these laws, gentlemen, is the liberty of the press. I appeal to all those among you who are most especially my contemporaries—was not the liberty of the press an object ardently desired by all those excellent men whom we have admired in our youth—the Malesherbes, the d’Estignys, and the Trudaines?—who, to say the least, were not inferior to any of the statesmen who have flourished since their time. The place which the men I have just named occupy in our recollections, sufficiently proves that the liberty of the press consolidates legitimate renown, and if it ruins usurped reputations, where is the evil?
“If I have said enough to prove that the liberty of the press is, in France, the necessary result of the present state of society, it now only remains for me to establish my second proposition—viz., that a government endangers its stability when it obstinately refuses to grant that which the age proclaims to be a necessity.
“In the most tranquil and happy conditions of society there is always a certain number of men who aspire to gain, by the help of disorder, the wealth which they possess not, and the importance which they ought not to possess. Is it wise to place in the hands of these enemies of social order, weapons of discontent, without which their perversity would ever remain powerless? Why give them the privilege of continually claiming the fulfilment of a promise? They will but abuse that privilege, and in this instance they are not, as in some others, seeking merely a chimerical good.
“Society, in its progressive advance, is destined to feel new necessities. I readily admit that governments ought not rashly to acknowledge them or to convert them into laws. But when these necessities have once been acknowledged, to take back what has been granted, or (which amounts to the same thing) to withhold that which has been granted, or to suspend it unceasingly, is a dangerous course, of which I earnestly hope those who have put it in practice may not have reason to repent. A government should never compromise its own good faith. In the present age, it is not easy to carry on deception for any lengthened period of time. There is a power whose wisdom is superior to that of Voltaire, whose intelligence is greater than that of Bonaparte—a power, in short, superior to the directors or to any of the ministers, past, present, or to come—that power is the great mass of mankind. To engage, or at least to persist, in a conflict on any question on which the majority of the world conceive their interests to be at stake, is an error, and all political errors are dangerous.
“When the freedom of the press exists, when people know that their interests will be defended, they trust that time will render them justice, however tardily that justice may come. They rely on hope, and with reason, for even hope cannot be long deceived. But when the liberty of the press is restricted, when no complaint is permitted to be heard, discontent forces a government either into too much weakness or too much severity.
“But these reflections are carrying me too far, and I must conclude. For the interest of the King and of France, I demand a repressive law, and I vote against the censorship.”