There are, as I said, only two interventions in public affairs during these fourteen years. In 1820 the Prince thought he was on the point of re-entering politics, and he projected a Ministry, but he was not invited to form one. The new Ministry introduced in the following year a law for the censorship of the press, and Talleyrand rose to oppose it in the House of Peers. He made a long and stirring appeal for the liberty of the press, which he described as “one of the essential instruments of representative government.” Boldly defending the better elements of the Revolution and the philosophers who prepared the way for it, he threatened the reactionaries with the force of public opinion. “To-day,” he said, “it is not easy to deceive for long. There is someone who has more intelligence than Voltaire, more intelligence than Bonaparte, more than the Directors or any Minister, past, present, or to come—that is, everybody.” The feeling is unmistakeably sincere. Through the Napoleonic and Bourbonien phases he has returned substantially to the position of 1789. In 1800 he had smiled at Napoleon’s treatment of the press. Experience had brought him back to moderate democracy. Two years later he again protested against the action of the Government. When the Revolution had swept away the throne in Spain, the Royalist interest in France determined to intervene and restore it. Talleyrand had not an opportunity of delivering his speech, but he had it published and made some impression. He recalled Napoleon’s unhappy intervention, and predicted that the present raid, which he described as equally immoral, would end as disastrously. He was wrong in his prophecy, but undoubtedly right in his protest. His manifesto reveals on another side the maturing of his liberal and humanitarian views.