Amiens, Jan. 30, 1795.

Delacroix, author of "Les Constitutions Politiques de l’Europe," [The Political Constitutions of Europe.] has lately published a work much read, and which has excited the displeasure of the Assembly so highly, that the writer, by way of preliminary criticism, has been arrested.  The book is intitled "Le Spectateur Francais pendant la Revolution." [The French Spectator during the Revolution.] It contains many truths, and some speculations very unfavourable both to republicanism and its founders.  It ventures to doubt the free acceptance of the democratic constitution, proposes indirectly the restoration of the monarchy, and dilates with great composure on a plan for transporting to America all the Deputies who voted for the King’s death.  The popularity of the work, still more than its principles, has contributed to exasperate the Assembly; and serious apprehensions are entertained for the fate of Delacroix, who is ordered for trial to the Revolutionary Tribunal.

It would astonish a superficial observer to see with what avidity all forbidden doctrines are read.  Under the Church and Monarchy, a deistical or republican author might sometimes acquire proselytes, or become the favourite amusement of fashionable or literary people; but the circulation of such works could be only partial, and amongst a particular class of readers:  whereas the treason of the day, which comprises whatever favours Kings or religion, is understood by the meanest individual, and the temptation to these prohibited enjoyments is assisted both by affection and prejudice.—­An almanack, with a pleasantry on the Convention, or a couplet in behalf of royalism, is handed mysteriously through half a town, and a brochure [A pamphlet.] of higher pretensions, though on the same principles, is the very bonne bouche of our political gourmands. [Gluttons.]

There is, in fact, no liberty of the press.  It is permitted to write against Barrere or the Jacobins, because they are no longer in power; but a single word of disrespect towards the Convention is more certain of being followed by a Lettre de Cachet, than a volume of satire on any of Louis the Fourteenth’s ministers would have been formerly.  The only period in which a real freedom of the press has existed in France were those years of the late King’s reign immediately preceding the revolution; and either through the contempt, supineness, or worse motives, of those who should have checked it, it existed in too great a degree:  so that deists and republicans were permitted to corrupt the people, and undermine the government without restraint.*

* It is well known that Calonne encouraged libels on the Queen, to obtain credit for his zeal in suppressing them; and the culpable vanity of Necker made made him but too willing to raise his own reputation on the wreck of that of an unsuspecting and unfortunate Monarch.

After the fourteenth of July 1789, political literature became more subject to mobs and the lanterne, than ever it had been to Ministers and Bastilles; and at the tenth of August 1792, every vestige of the liberty of the press disappeared.*—­