“If I have said enough to prove that the liberty of the press is, in France, the necessary result of the present state of society, it now only remains for me to establish my second proposition—viz., that a government endangers its stability when it obstinately refuses to grant that which the age proclaims to be a necessity.
“In the most tranquil and happy conditions of society there is always a certain number of men who aspire to gain, by the help of disorder, the wealth which they possess not, and the importance which they ought not to possess. Is it wise to place in the hands of these enemies of social order, weapons of discontent, without which their perversity would ever remain powerless? Why give them the privilege of continually claiming the fulfilment of a promise? They will but abuse that privilege, and in this instance they are not, as in some others, seeking merely a chimerical good.
“Society, in its progressive advance, is destined to feel new necessities. I readily admit that governments ought not rashly to acknowledge them or to convert them into laws. But when these necessities have once been acknowledged, to take back what has been granted, or (which amounts to the same thing) to withhold that which has been granted, or to suspend it unceasingly, is a dangerous course, of which I earnestly hope those who have put it in practice may not have reason to repent. A government should never compromise its own good faith. In the present age, it is not easy to carry on deception for any lengthened period of time. There is a power whose wisdom is superior to that of Voltaire, whose intelligence is greater than that of Bonaparte—a power, in short, superior to the directors or to any of the ministers, past, present, or to come—that power is the great mass of mankind. To engage, or at least to persist, in a conflict on any question on which the majority of the world conceive their interests to be at stake, is an error, and all political errors are dangerous.
“When the freedom of the press exists, when people know that their interests will be defended, they trust that time will render them justice, however tardily that justice may come. They rely on hope, and with reason, for even hope cannot be long deceived. But when the liberty of the press is restricted, when no complaint is permitted to be heard, discontent forces a government either into too much weakness or too much severity.