excite the public mind. So loose an expression gave discretionary power
to the authorities. The extreme penalty was not enforced, but
imprisonment and exile were somewhat capriciously inflicted on authors
and printers.

But a book that had received the _imprimatur_ of the censor was not
yet safe. The clergy might denounce, or the Parliament condemn it. The
church was quick to scent danger. An honest scholar, an upright and
original thinker, could hardly escape the reproach of irreligion or of
heresy. Nor were the laws fairly administered. It might be more
dangerous to be supposed to allude disagreeably to the mistress of a
prince, than to attack the government of the kingdom. Had a severe law
been severely and consistently enforced, slander, heresy, and political
thought might have been stamped out together. Such was in some measure
the case in the reign of Louis XIV. But under the misrule of the
courtiers of his feeble successors, no strict law was adhered to. There
was a common tendency to wink at illegal writings of which half the
public approved. Malesherbes, for instance, was at one time at the head
of the official censors. He is said to have had a way of warning authors
and publishers the day before a descent was to be made upon their
houses. Under laws thus enforced, authors who held new doctrines learned
to adapt their methods to those of the government. Almost all the great
French writers of the eighteenth century framed some passages in their
books for the purpose of satisfying the censor or of avoiding
punishment. They were profuse in expressions of loyally to church and
state, in passages sometimes sounding ludicrously hollow, sometimes
conveying the most biting mockery and satire, and again in words hardly
to be distinguished from the heartfelt language of devotion. They became
skillful at hinting, and masters of the art of innuendo. They attacked
Christianity under the name of Mahometanism, and if they had occasion to