“But there are two points of view in which it appears to me that the question has not been adequately considered, and which I will reduce to the two following propositions—
“I. The liberty of the press is a necessity of the age.
“II. A government endangers its stability when it obstinately refuses to grant that which the age proclaims to be necessary.
“The human mind is never completely stationary. The discovery of yesterday is but the medium for arriving at a new discovery to-morrow. Nevertheless it is true that human intelligence would seem to advance by crises; there are periods when that intelligence is urged forward by the desire of creating and producing; and there are times when, satisfied with its acquisitions, it appears to repose within itself, and to be occupied in arranging and setting in order the riches it possesses, rather than in earning new wealth. The seventeenth century was one of these fortunate epochs. The human mind, amazed at the vast treasures of which it had become possessed through the invention of printing, seemed to stop short in its onward movement, as if eager to rest in the enjoyment of its magnificent heritage. Revelling in the luxuries of literature, science, and the arts, it set its glory on the production of master-pieces. The great men of the age of Louis XIV. vied one with another in embellishing a state of society, beyond which they could see nothing or wish for nothing, and which seemed destined to endure as long as the glory of the great king who engrossed all their respect and enthusiasm. But the fertile mine of antiquity being exhausted, the activity of the human mind was turned, as it were by force, into another channel, and it found novelty in those speculative studies which embrace the whole future, and whose limits are indefinable. Such were the circumstances which ushered in the commencement of the eighteenth century, destined to prove so dissimilar to the century that had preceded it. The poetic lessons of Telemachus were succeeded by the theories of the Esprit des Lois; and the Port-Royal was superseded by the Encyclopedia.
“I beg you to observe, gentlemen, that I am neither concurring nor approving, but merely narrating.