shameful assault, did French thinkers owe, in no small measure, the
influence which English writers exercised upon them.

While in England, Voltaire was taking notes and writing letters. These
he probably worked over during the years immediately following his
return to France. The "Lettres Philosophiques," or "Letters concerning
the English Nation," were first published in England in 1733. They were
allowed to slip into circulation in France in the following year.
Promptly condemned by the Parliament of Paris as "scandalous and
contrary to religion and morals, and to the respect due to the powers
that be," they were "torn and burned at the foot of the great
staircase," and read all the more for it.

It is no wonder that the church, and that conservative if sometimes
heterodox body, the Parliament of Paris, should have condemned the
"English Letters." A bitter satire is leveled at France, with her
religion and her government, under cover of candid praise of English
ways and English laws. What could the Catholic clergy say to words like
these, put into the mouth of a Quaker? "God forbid that we should dare
to command any one to receive the Holy Ghost on Sunday to the exclusion
of the rest of the faithful! Thank Heaven we are the only people on
earth who have no priests! Would you rob us of so happy a distinction?
Why should we abandon our child to mercenary nurses when we have milk to
give him? These hirelings would soon govern the house and oppress mother
and child. God has said: `Freely ye have received; freely give.' After
that saying, shall we go chaffer with the Gospel, sell the Holy Ghost,
and turn a meeting of Christians into a tradesman's shop? We do not give
money to men dressed in black, to assist our poor, to bury our dead, to
preach to the faithful. Those holy occupations are too dear to us to be
cast off upon others."[Footnote: Voltaire, xxxvii. 124.]