According to them, the railing attacks which the prophets occasionally sang to the kings of Israel, were defamatory libels to excite the people to rise up against them. As the populace, however, read but little anywhere, it is believed that these half-disclosed satires never did any great harm. Sedition is produced by speaking to assemblies of the people, rather than by writing for them. For this reason, one of the first things done by Queen Elizabeth of England on her accession, was to order that for six months no one should preach without express permission. The "Anti-Cato" of Cæsar was a libel, but Cæsar did more harm to Cato by the battle of Pharsalia, than by his "Diatribes". The "Philippics" of Cicero were libels, but the proscriptions of the Triumvirs were far more terrible libels. St. Cyril and St. Gregory Nazianzen compiled libels against the emperor Julian, but they were so generous as not to publish them until after his death. Nothing resembles libels more than certain manifestoes of sovereigns. The secretaries of the sultan Mustapha made a libel of his declaration of war. God has punished them for it; but the same spirit which animated Cæsar, Cicero, and the secretaries of Mustapha, reigns in all the reptiles who spin libels in their garrets. "_Natura est semper sibi consona._" Who would believe that the souls of Garasse, Nonnotte, Paulian, Fréron, and he of Langliviet, calling himself La Beaumelle, were in this respect of the same temper as those of Cæsar, Cicero, St. Cyril, and of the secretary of the grand seignior? Nothing is, however, more certain. LIBERTY. Either I am much deceived, or Locke has very well defined liberty to be "power". I am still further deceived, or Collins, a celebrated magistrate of London, is the only philosopher who has profoundly developed this idea, while Clarke has only answered him as a theologian. Of all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little dialogue has appeared to me the most comprehensive: A. A battery of cannon is discharged at our ears; have you the liberty to hear it, or not to hear it, as you please? B. Undoubtedly I cannot hinder myself from hearing it. A. Are you willing that these cannon shall take off your head and those of your wife and daughter who walk with you? B. What a question! I cannot, at least while I am in my right senses, wish such a thing; it is impossible. A. Good; you necessarily hear these cannon, and you necessarily wish not for the death of yourself and your family by a discharge from them. You have neither the power of not hearing it, nor the power of wishing to remain here. B. That is clear. A. You have, I perceive, advanced thirty paces to be out of the reach of the cannon; you have had the power of walking these few steps with me. B. That is also very clear.