“In Spain, in Italy, and in Austria, the prohibitions and censures went much further, and in those countries heavy shackles have been imposed on the liberty of writing and of thinking.” The writer complains that “in public libraries in these countries, the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Helvetius, of Diderot, and of other _esprits forts_, are kept under lock and key with the order that they shall not be communicated to any persons excepting to those who shall engage to refute their doctrines.” He makes reference to the dismissal from office, in 1780, of a professor of a Bavarian university who had requested that a copy of Bayle’s _Critical Dictionary_ should be placed in the common library. “In those countries is still maintained as far as possible the policy of the Middle Ages, under which the minds of men are to be kept on certain subjects in complete stupidity or in a state of emptiness so that they may later be filled with convenient doctrine or may be kept free for superstition.[175] Mendham points out that “It is not going beyond the truth to say that an almost perfect library might be formed from the books condemned by the papal Indexes, perfect indeed for all purposes of absolute and abundant utility. It would need only to have added to it a few Benedictine editions of the Fathers, histories and accounts of modern Roman affairs and the collection of the Bulls, Councils, etc.... It would also be somewhat lacking in English books, prolific as this island is in offensive and formidable heresy. The fact is, that the literary productions of England have come into contact or collision with the Italian only by means of translations. It is in this that we find in the Indexes the works of Swift, Tillotson, Sherlock, Robertson, Gibbon, and others.... There is a further detail, that these prohibitory and expurgatory instruments could only be put into execution among subjects of papal government.... Any attempt to enforce them in other States would have provoked hostilities with their heretical community with no prospect of advantage and with much risk of disadvantage to the Roman power.”[176]