The very first sacrifice which the Emperor gave to freedom proved an inconvenient one to his government. This was nothing less than the freedom of the press. It is true, that the influence of his minister of police managed by indirect means to get possession of most of the journals; so that of sixty writers, employed generally, if not constantly, in periodical composition, five only were now found friendly to the royal cause. The other pens, which a few days before described Napoleon as a species of Ogre, who had devoured the youth of France, now wrote him down a hero and a liberator. Still, when the liberty of the press was once established, it was soon found impossible to prevent it from asserting its right of utterance; and there were found authors to advocate the cause of the Bourbons, from principle, from caprice, from the love of contradiction.
Napoleon, who always showed himself sensitively alive to the public censure, established inspectors of the booksellers. The minister of police, a friend of liberty, but, as Compte, the editor of _Le Censeur_, neatly observed, only of liberty after the fashion of M. Fouché, used every art in his power to prevent the contagion of freedom from spreading too widely. This M. Compte was a loud, and probably a sincere advocate of freedom, and had been a promoter of Buonaparte's return, as likely to advance the good cause. Seeing the prevailing influence of the military, he published some severe remarks on the undue weight the army assumed in public affairs, which, he hesitated not to say, was bringing France to the condition of Rome, when the empire was disposed of by the Prætorian guards. This stung to the quick--the journal was seized by the police, and the minister endeavoured to palliate the fact in the _Moniteur_, by saying, that, though seized, it had been instantly restored. But Compte was not a man to be so silenced; he published a contradiction of the official statement, and declared that his journal had not been restored. He was summoned the next day before the prefect, alternately threatened and wheedled, upbraided at one moment with ungrateful resistance to the cause of the Emperor, and requested at the next to think of something in which government might serve him. Steeled against every proffer and entreaty, Compte only required to be permitted to profit by the restored liberty of the press; nor could the worthy magistrate make him rightly understand that when the Emperor gave all men liberty to publish what pleased themselves, it was under the tacit condition that it should also please the prefect and minister of police. Compte had the spirit to publish the whole affair.