Authors or printers had the option of submitting their MSS. to the examination of the censors previous to printing. But even after being examined, approved, and printed, a work could be seized and its sale stopped by the minister of police, who was however to forward it with his re marks, within twenty-four hours, to the Council of State, which judged finally upon it. A well known instance of this occurred with regard to Madame de Steel's book on Germany, which was seized after having been examined and printed, and the whole edition was destroyed. " Your book is not French, and we are not re duced to seek for models among the na tions which you admire," was the minister of police's (Savary) reply to Madame de Steel's remonstrances on the subject.
Books printed abroad could not be im ported into France without permission from the director-general.
The police had the censorship of dra matic works intended for the stage. Only one newspaper was allowed in each de partment, with the exception of Paris, subject to the approbation of the respective prefect. Such was the condition of the press in France during the latter years of Napoleon's empire.
At the first restoration of the Bourbons, in 1814, an article of the Charter of Louis XVIII. acknowledged that " Frenchmen had the right of publishing their opinions by means of the press, conformably how ever to the laws enacted for the repression of any abuse of the liberty of the press." Soon after, the Abbe de Montesquiou, Minister of the Interior, laid before the chambers the project of a law concerning the press, the effect of which would have been nearly to destroy its freedom. He proposed that all works of less than thirty sheets were to be subject to a previous censorship (censure preaksble), excepting those in the dead or foreign languages, bishops' charges, pastoral letters, and cate chisms and prayer-books, and memoirs of literary and scientific societies. This project was examined by a commission of the chamber, which rejected in its report the previous censorship. The article eight of the charter said that the law should repress the abuse of the liberty of the press, but the ministerial project by its previous censorship tended to prevent it by suppressing the liberty altogether. The discussion was warm. Montesquion maintained that to prevent and to repress were synonymous. He at last agreed to exempt from the previous censorship all works of twenty sheets and above, instead of thirty. With this modification the bill passed both houses by considerable ma jorities. A council of twenty censors was appointed. The office of director general of the press was retained. Every printer was obliged to give notice of each work that he intended to print, and to deposit two copies of it, when printed, at the director's office, before he published the work.
When Napoleon returned from Elba, in 1815, he did not enforce the previous censorship, because, said he, they had published whatever they pleased against him under the Bourbons, and the matter was now exhausted. The other regula tions however concerning printing and publishing were maintained, and the press and the emperor were often at variance during the hundred days. The previous
censorship was temporarily re-established and abolished again under the second restoration of Louis XVIII. After Charles X. came to the throne, he abo lished the previous censorship altogether, and by so doing he gained a momentary popularity with the Parisians. But the press, and especially the newspaper press, did not show any great extent of gratitude for the boon, for it proved throughout his reign a sharp thorn in his side, as may be seen by the famous report of his ministers, upon which report the ordinances of July, 1830, were based. That report was at tributed to M. Chantelauze, the keeper of the seals, but it was signed by all the ministers. It contains an able, an elo quent, and, in the main, a true exposition of the crafty and persevering course of conspiracy by which the press was con stantly exciting or feeding a determined hostility towards the king and his govern ment, casting suspicion upon and mis representing all their acts, even those which were evidently beneficial and libe ral, because they proceeded from persons whom the press itself had rendered un popular, appealing to the passions and prejudices of a susceptible and unin structed multitude, and thus rendering, in fact, government impossible. This report is a very interesting historical document, and ought to be read by those who wish to form a dispassionate judg ment of the press, and its powers for good and evil. " At all times," said the minis ter, "the periodical press had been, as it was in its nature to be, an instrument of disorder and sedition." Accordingly the first of the ordinances of Charles X., signed the 25th of July, suspended the liberty of the periodical press ; no journal was to be henceforth published without a special authorization of the government, which was to be renewed every three months. All pamphlets or works under twenty sheets of letter-press were made subject to the same authorization. The ordonnances however were resisted, and the revolution of July was the result. The revised charter which was after wards promulgated, Charte de 1830,' in its seventh article, says : "Frenchmen have the right of publishing and printing their opinions, conformably to the laws. The censorship shall never be re-estab• fished." New laws however were enacted to repress the abuses of the press, among which the law of the 9th of September, 1835, is, we believe, the latest. It em bodies or refers to many of the former laws of the Empire and the Restoration. It specifies the crimes and misdemeanors committed by means of the press, and assigns the penalty to each. The pro prietors of political journals are obliged to deposit a considerable sum in the treasury as a security for their good be haviour. One hundred thousand francs (four thousand pounds sterling) is the deposit required for a daily Paris news paper, and one half the sum for a weekly paper.