In former days the whole energy of the contending parties had been expended in winning over the reading public, or the nation, to their respective sides; now the desire of both was to win the favour of the mighty potentate. The _Journal des Débats_ endeavoured to stir up the Emperor's wrath against "philosophy." "The philosophers" tried to make him angry with the _Journal des Débats_. The clerical party denounced the philosophers as destroyers by profession, who, as such, must inevitably hate Napoleon, the great master-builder. The philosophers accused the clericals of intending, as soon as the Emperor's building was completed, to hand over the keys of it to another.
The future showed that the philosophers were right. The adherents of the Neo-Catholic school were and remained closely attached to the old royal family. Their mode of procedure was to praise Delille because he was in disgrace, and Chateaubriand because, by resigning his appointment after the execution of the Duke of Enghien, he proved himself to be an enemy of tyranny. They drew men's attention to all the good points of the old régime under pretext of writing history.
Napoleon, who kept a keen eye upon journalistic literature, at last lost patience. A written communication has been preserved which was put into the hands of one of the Emperor's officials, to be by him transmitted to Fiévée, the publisher of the _Mercure_ (a man with whom the Emperor sometimes corresponded privately). Every word in this paper is significant; note particularly the change from the impersonal third to the first person singular. There is no direct indication as to who is the writer of the document; in the beginning it is that indefinite, anonymous being, the Government, that speaks; then all at once we feel who is wielding the pen--the lion shows his claws. "Monsieur de Lavalette will go to Monsieur Fiévée and say to him that in the _Journal des Débats_, which is read with more attention than the other newspapers, because it has ten times as large a circulation, articles have been found, written in a spirit altogether favourable to the Bourbons, consequently with complete indifference to the welfare of the state; say that it has been determined to suppress any articles in this paper that are too ill-affected; that the system pursued is undoubtedly a system of long-suffering; that it is, however, not enough that they should not be directly hostile; that the Government has the right to demand that they shall be entirely devoted to the reigning house, and that they shall not suffer but oppose everything which can add lustre to the cause of the Bourbons or evoke reminiscences favourable to them; that as yet no decisive step has been determined on; that the inclination is to permit the _Journal des Débats_ to continue to appear if men are presented to _me_ in whom _I_ can have confidence, and to whom _I_ can entrust the editorship of the paper."[1]