Literature once more disturbed the King and the court. The council was informed that a large work was printing at Paris, under the title of the Encyclopedia. This was a rhapsody compiled from all the dictionaries extant, to which was added, by the compilers, reflexions of a suspicious tendency on religion and politics. This heap of reasoning conveyed no instruction how to think, but only taught how to doubt. A man of letters said to me at that time, the Encyclopedia could only increase the number of ignoramus’s, and warp the minds of men of learning.
Such writings as tended to support materialism, made an impression at court, and this production was ranked in this predicament. The King commanded the two first volumes of this production to be suppressed. The same arret which prohibited them, condemned the publishers of them to pay a considerable fine.
This suppression gave birth to an anonymous memorial upon this subject, which appeared to me very sensible, and which was conceived in these terms.
“The government has established a tribunal to examine the productions of the mind. It consists of a minister and twenty-four royal censors, whose sole employment is to revise manuscripts destined for the press.
“A book that is submitted to the examination of this tribunal, is under the protection of the government. The author has done all that the laws required of him. He is not answerable for the effects that the publication of his book may produce. This literary minister should be its voucher, and liable to such penalties as the author would incur, if he had printed it in a clandestine manner. It nevertheless, daily happens, that a book meets with the approbation of this tribunal, and is often censured by the government. The writer is prosecuted—he is punished in such a manner, as if it had been concealed from this jurisdiction. The parliament takes cognizance of it, the book is burnt, and the author sent to the Bastile. What could be done more, if he had acted in defiance of the ordonnances made upon this subject?
“There is an error in literary jurisdiction, which will always occasion grievances and divisions in the republic of letters. The minister who presides at this tribunal, has neither the capacity nor leisure to peruse all the MSS. that are presented for the press: they are put into the hands of censors, who have neither more time nor more genius than himself.
“They are frequently upon abstracted subjects, and above the capacity of both—then the censors read them without comprehending them, and sign them without understanding them. Their approbation being thus obtained, the work is accordingly printed, the book appears, and the prosecution begins just where it should end.
“The inconvenience that resulted from it would be of no great importance, if the sentence pronounced against the author put an end to the dispute; but it almost constantly happens, that the public interest themselves in the contest. The erroneous maxims it contains are credited; the more they are condemned, the more the book comes into vogue. Its suppression is of no effect, the editions increase in proportion as they are prohibited: for it is only necessary to censure a book in order to raise its reputation. Many works that would have been despised had they passed unnoticed, have acquired importance from the government’s condemning them.
“Hence those various divisions that have immersed the state into greater misfortunes than have been produced by civil wars.
“Instead of chastising the author that has written a dangerous book, the minister who allowed it to be printed, should be punished. The first submitted his performance to the established police for preventing the publication of dangerous works, and the other published it. The first only injured himself, the other injured the state,” &c. &c.