Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

In 1624 a regular censorship was started by Louis XIII., who by an edict appointed four censors, chosen from the Faculty of Theology, to each of whom was accorded a salary of 500 livres, with honours, immunities, etc. The University protested against this edict, which encroached upon its secular rights. The dispute lasted long, and the four theologians resigned their office. But in 1626 the king entrusted the Guard of the Seals with the choice of censors, and the University lost this part of its privileges. Three years later Louis XIII. issued an ordinance which forbade the printing or selling of any book not inscribed with the names of the author and the printer.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were lands of refuge in which writers who feared the political laws and the despotism of their own country could always find free presses: Holland, that is to say, and Switzerland. It was in Holland that Bayle published his famous Dictionary.

The Constitution of 1791 “guaranteed” to every man “the liberty of writing, printing, and publishing his thoughts without his works being liable to any censure or inspection before their publication.” The Convention passed no law against the press. The pamphlets of the enemies of the Revolution still exist, and testify to the plenitude of the liberty enjoyed by writers at this period. Some of these, it is true, were accused of connivance with the foes of their country, and punished for that crime; but there was no question of process against the press.

The Consulate, with its strict régime, had less respect for the liberty of the pen. By a decree of 17th February, 1800, the consuls granted power to suppress those journals which published articles contrary to the welfare of society, the sovereignty of the people, or the glory of the national arms. Under the Empire new fetters were placed upon the press. In 1810 the number of printers in Paris was limited to sixty. In the following year another twenty were authorised; but, on the other hand, the censorship which had been suspended was re-established. The Restoration accorded to printers full liberty for producing works of more than twenty sheets, but maintained the censorship for smaller publications, and subjected the newspapers to royal authority.

The press had taken too great a part in the Revolution of July not to derive from it, at first, in any case, some advantage. The new Charter, in proclaiming the liberty of the press, within the limits of the law, declared that the censorship could never be re-established. Some years later,[{181}] however, heavy fetters were once more placed upon the newspapers of France, though book-publishers retained their former measure of liberty.

At the period of 1835, under the monarchy of July, numerous prosecutions were instituted against the press; and the jury who tried these cases, though it often acquitted, sometimes condemned with rigour. The Republican journal, the Tribune, succumbed beneath the weight of the fines imposed on it.

The Republic of 1848 accorded to the press a liberty quite as unlimited as it now enjoys, though the free use it made of this liberty produced a reaction and new fetters in the following year.

The invention of printing was made the subject of a play by the unfortunate Gérard de Nerval, author of the Voyage en Orient, and of a translation of Faust which Goethe himself admired. In Gérard de Nerval’s drama figure a good angel and a demon; and when the good angel, always anxious to benefit humanity, invents printing, the demon comes forward and says: “I invent the censorship.” Of the censorship in connection with printed works some account has been given, and a few words may be added in reference to the censorship as bearing upon works written for the stage.