Paris, March 8, 1802.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be always able to answer your inquiries without hesitation. Considering the round of amusements in which I live, I flatter myself you will readily admit that it requires no small share of good-will and perseverance to devote so much time to scribbling for your entertainment. As for information, you will, on your arrival in Paris, know how much or how little you have derived from the perusal of my letters. You will then have it in your power to compare and judge. With the originals before you, you cannot be at a loss to determine how far the sketches resemble them.

Some of your inquiries have been already answered in my former letters. Among the number, however, you will find no reply on the subject of the

PRESENT STATE OF THE FRENCH PRESS.

This question being of a nature no less delicate than that concerning the police, you cannot but commend my discretion in adopting a similar method to gratify your curiosity; that is, to refer you to the intelligent author whom I quoted on the former occasion. If common report speaks the truth—Sit mihi fas audita loqui?—the press here is now in much the same state in which it was before the revolution. I shall therefore borrow again the language of MERCIER, who is a famous dreamer, inasmuch as many of his dreams have been realized: yet, with all his foresight and penetration, I question whether he ever dreamt that his picture of the French press, drawn in the interval between the years 1781 and 1788, would still be, in some respects, a true one at the beginning of the year 1802. But, as Boileau shrewdly remarks,

"Le vrai peut quelquefois n'Être pas vraisemblable."

"The enemies of books," says our author, "are the enemies of, knowledge, and consequently of mankind. The shackles with which the press is loaded, are an incitement for setting them at defiance. If we were to enjoy a decent liberty, we should no longer have recourse to licentiousness. There are political evils which the liberty of the press prevents, and this is already a great benefit. The interior police of States requires to be enlightened by disinterested writings. There is no one but the philosopher, satisfied with the esteem alone of his fellow-citizens, that can raise himself above the clouds formed by personal interest, and set forth the abuses of insidious custom. In short, the liberty of the press will always be the measure of civil liberty; and it is a species of thermometer, which shews, at one glance, what a people have lost or gained.

"If we adopt this maxim, we are every day losing; for every day the press is more restricted.

"Suffer people to think and speak; the public will judge: they will even find means to correct authors. The surest method to purify the press, is to render it free: obstacles irritate it: prohibitions and difficulties engender the pamphlets complained of.

"Could despotism kill thought in its sanctuary, and prevent us from communicating the essence of our ideas to the mind of our fellow-creatures, it would do so. But not being able quite to pluck out the philosopher's tongue, and cut off his hands, it establishes an inquisition, peoples the frontiers with searchers, spreads satellites, and opens every package, in order to interrupt the infallible progress of morality and truth. Useless and puerile effort! Vain attack on the natural right of general society, and on the patriotic rights of a particular one! Reason, from day to day, strikes nations with a greater lustre, and will at last shine unclouded. It answers no purpose to fear or persecute genius: nothing will extinguish in its hands the torch of truth: the decree which its mouth pronounces, will be repeated by all posterity against the unjust man. He wished to snatch from his fellow-creatures the most noble of all privileges, that of thinking, which is inseparable from that of existing: he will have manifested his weakness and folly; and he will merit the twofold reproach of tyranny and impotence.

"When a very flat, very atrocious, and very calumniating libel appears under a fellow's coat, 'tis a contest who shall have it first. People pay an exorbitant price for it; the hawker who cannot read, and who wishes only to get bread for his poor family, is apprehended, and sent to prison, where he shifts for himself as well as he can.

"The more the libel is prohibited, the more eager we are for it. When we have read it, and we see that nothing compensates for its mean temerity, we are ashamed to have sought after it. We scarcely dare say, we have read it: 'tis the scum of low literature, and what is there without its scum?

"Contempt would be the surest weapon against those miserable productions which are equally destitute of truth and talent.

"When will men in power know how to disdain equally the interested encomiums of intriguing flatterers and the satires produced by hunger?

"Besides, those who sit in the first boxes must always expect some shafts levelled at them by those who are in the pit; this becomes almost inevitable. They must needs pay for their more commodious place: at least we attribute to those who rule over us more enjoyments: they have some which they will avow, solely with a view to raise themselves above the multitude. The human heart is naturally envious. Let men in power then forgive or dissemble seasonably: satire will fall to the ground; it is by shewing themselves impassible, that they will disarm ardent malignity.

"Nevertheless, there is a kind of odious libel, which, having every characteristic of calumny, ought to be repressed. This is commonly nothing more than the fruit of anonymous and envenomed revenge: for what are the secret intrigues of courts to any man of letters? He will know time enough that which will suit the pen of history.

"A libeller should be punished, as every thing violent ought to be. But the parties interested should abstain from pronouncing; for where then would be the proportion between the punishment and the crime?

"I apply not the name of libels to those atrocious and gratuitous accusations against the private life of persons in power or individuals unconnected with the government. Such injurious and unmeaning shafts are an attack on honour: their authors should be punished.

"The police detected and apprehended one of its inspectors, who, being charged to discover those libels, proposed the composition of similar ones to some half-starved authors. After having laid for them this infernal snare for the gain of a little money, he informed against them, and sold them to the government.

"These miscreants, blinded by the eager thirst of a little gold, divert themselves with the uneasiness of the government, and the more they see it in the trances of apprehension, the more they delight in magnifying the danger, and doubling its alarms.

"Liberty has rendered the English government insensible to libels. Disdain is certain, before the work is commenced. If the satire is ingenious, people laugh at it, without believing it; if it is flat, they despise it.

"Why cannot the French government partly adopt this indifference? A contempt, more marked, for those vile and unknown pens that endeavour to wound the sensibility of pride, would disgust the readers of the flat and lying satires after which they are so eager, only because they imagine that the government is really offended by them.

"It is to be observed that the productions that flatter more or less public malignity, spread in fugitive sparks a central fire, which, if compressed, would, perhaps, produce an explosion.

"Magistrates have not yet been seen disdaining those obscure shafts, rendering themselves invulnerable from the openness of their proceedings, and considering that praise will be mute, as long as criticism cannot freely raise its voice.

"Let them then punish the flattery by which they are assailed, since they are so much afraid of the libel that always contains some good truths: besides, the public are there to judge the detractor; and no unjust satire ever circulated a fort-night, without being branded with contempt.

"Ministers reciprocally deceive each other when they are attacked in this manner; the one laughs at the storm which has just burst on the other, and promotes secretly what he appears to prosecute openly and with warmth. It would be a curious thing if one could bring to light the good tricks which the votaries of ambition play each other in the road to power and fortune.

"There is nothing now printed in Paris, in the line of politics and history, but satires and falsehoods. Foreigners look down with pity on every thing that emanates from the capital on these matters. Other subjects begin to feel the consequences of this, because the restraint laid on the mind is manifested even in books of simple amusement. The presses of Paris are no longer to serve but for posting-bills, and invitations to funerals and weddings. Almanacks are already a subject too elevated, and the inquisition examines and garbles them.

"When I see a book," says MERCIER, "sanctioned by the government, I would lay a wager, without opening it, that this book contains political falsehoods. The chief magistrate may well say: 'This piece of paper shall be worth a thousand francs;' but he cannot say: 'Let this error become truth,' or, 'let this truth no longer be anything but an error.' He may say it, but he can never compel men's minds to adopt it.

"What is admirable in printing, is that these fine works, which do honour to human genius, are not to be commanded or paid for; on the contrary, it is the natural liberty of a generous mind, which unfolds itself in spite of dangers, and makes a present to human nature, in spite of tyrants. This is what renders the man of letters so commendable, and insures to him the gratitude of future ages.

"O! worthy Englishmen! generous people, strangers to our shameful servitude, carefully preserve among you the liberty of the press: it is the pledge of your freedom. At this day, you alone are the representatives of nearly all mankind; you uphold the dignity of the name of man. The thunderbolts, which strike the pride and insolence of arbitrary power, issue from your happy island. Human reason has found among you an asylum whence she may instruct the world. Your books are not subject to an inquisition; and it would require a long comment to explain to you in what manner permission is at length obtained for a flimsy pamphlet, which no one will read, to be exposed for sale, and remain unsold, on the Quai de GÉvres.

"We are so absurd and so little in comparison to you," adds MERCIER, "that you would be at a loss to conceive the excess of our weakness and humiliation."