During the 18th century, however, various attempts were made to control the literary policy of journals the managers of which were within reach of ecclesiastical authority, and during the 19th century, censorship decrees were issued in regard to a number of journals which concerned themselves with ecclesiastical subjects. The only practicable measure to take against journals the articles in which are judged to be pernicious in their influence is to prohibit the faithful from reading or from possessing copies of the same. It has, however, been found convenient, in the cases in which such prohibitions appeared to be called for, to have the same issued and enforced, not by the Congregation, but by the local authorities. After 1850, the Minister of the Interior in the papal States printed lists of the foreign journals the reading of which was forbidden. 1862. December. Adames, Apostolic Vicar of Luxemburg, declared in a pastoral letter that the publisher of the _Courier de Luxemburg_ and his editors were excommunicated. The subscribers and readers of the journal were to be excluded from the sacraments on the ground that they were helping to support a work of Satan. The publisher took the matter into the courts, but the judges dismissed the complaint against Adames, taking the ground that his action was within his ecclesiastical and legal rights. (Vering, _Archiv_, X, 422, XII, 172.) In 1863, the Patriarch of Venice and the ten Venetian bishops, in a pastoral letter, prohibited the reading of three journals specified. 1870. Melchers, Archbishop of Cologne, published an instruction against the _Rheinische Merkur_, with which instruction the Bishop of Mayence and the Capitular-Vicar of Münster concurred. The Bishop of Paderborn issued an edict forbidding, as a mortal sin, the possession of a copy of the journal. No action appears to have been taken by the publishers, possibly because the circulation of the _Merkur_ was not seriously affected by these episcopal fulminations. 1871. Under instructions of Pius IX, a circular letter was issued by Cardinal Vicar Patrizzi to the pastors or parish priests directing them to forbid to their parishioners the reading of certain Roman journals. The list included _La Libertà_, _Il Capital_, _Il Tempo_, _La nuova Roma_, _La Vita Nuova_, and six others. Disobedience to this order was to be classed as a grievous sin. In 1873, a papal brief gave certain general instructions in regard to journals. It pointed out that these were covered by rules 2 and 7 of the Index. Papers were to be considered sheet by sheet, simply as open books. Permission might be accorded to a person to whom the information was necessary, to read in heretical or dangerous papers the political or financial articles, but the permission should be strictly limited to these portions of the journal.