"The _liberty of the press_," said Napoleon, "is not a question open for consideration. Its prohibition under a representative government is a gross anachronism, a downright absurdity. I therefore, on my return from Elba, abandoned the press to all its excesses, and I am confident that the press in no respect contributed to my downfall." In Napoleon's last letter to his son he writes, "My son will be obliged to allow the liberty of the press. This is a necessity in the present day. The liberty of the press ought to become, in the hands of the government, a powerful auxiliary in diffusing through all the most distant corners of the empire sound doctrines and good principles. To leave it to itself would be to fall asleep upon the brink of danger. On the conclusion of a general peace I would have instituted a Directory of the Press, composed of the ablest men of the country, and I would have diffused, even to the most distant hamlet, my ideas and my intentions."--_Las Casas._] [Footnote 206: Mirabeau, Camille Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Mercier, Carra, Gorsas, Marat, and Barrere, all published journals, and some of them had a very extensive circulation. _L'Ami du Peuple_, by Marat, was a very energetic sheet. Mirabeau printed ten thousand copies of his _Courrier de Province_. But by far the most popular and influential paper was the _Revolutions de Paris_, whose unknown editor was Loustalot, a sincere, earnest, laborious young man, who died in 1792, at the age of twenty-nine. Two hundred thousand copies of his paper were frequently sold.--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 240.] [Footnote 207: Miguet, p. 64.] [Footnote 208: M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, a Christian patriot and one of the most active members of the National Assembly, writes: "It is possible that all the kings of Europe may form a coalition against a humble page of writing; but, after a number of cannon-shots, and when those potentates have destroyed three or four hundred thousand men and laid waste twenty countries, it will not be the less true that _men are born free and equal as to their rights, and that the nation is the sovereign_. And it is possible that their obstinacy may have occasioned the discovery of other truths which, but for the wrath of those great princes, mankind would never have thought of."--_Political Reflections_, p. 176.] [Footnote 209: "All the wars of the European Continent against the Revolution and against the Empire were begun by England and supported by English gold. At last the object was attained; not only was the ancient family restored to the throne, but France was reduced to its original limits, its naval force destroyed, and its commerce almost annihilated."--_Encyclopædia Americana, Art. Great Britain._]