The prohibitory decrees are preceded by _qualification_. The process is instituted before the supreme council; but as the information is generally laid before the inquisitors of the court, they appoint the qualifiers who censure the book. A copy of the work and the denunciation is sent to the first qualifier, and afterwards to the second, unsigned by the opinion of the first; if they do not accord, copies are sent a third time before it is submitted to the Supreme Council. The inquisitors of the provinces have likewise the privilege of receiving informations: they proceed in the same manner; but the council always commission the inquisitors of the court to censure books, because they were more sure of their qualifiers. If any person presumed to buy, keep, or read prohibited books, he rendered himself liable to be suspected of heresy by the inquisitors, although it might not be proved that he became an heretic from such reading; he incurred the punishment of major excommunication, and was proceeded against by the tribunal: the result of this action was the absolution _ad cautelam_. During the last years of the eighteenth century, no person has been imprisoned for reading prohibited books, unless he was convicted of having advanced or written heretical propositions. The punishment inflicted was merely a pecuniary penalty, and a declaration that the individual was slightly suspected of heresy; it must be acknowledged that this qualification was omitted, if there was any reason to suppose that the accused had erred from motives of curiosity, and not from a tendency to false doctrine. Nevertheless all these proceedings are arbitrary, and the inquisitors have the power of pursuing the infringers of this law as if they were heretics. The permission to read prohibited books, rendered all actions instituted against those who violated the law ineffectual. The Pope granted it for a sum of money, without inquiring if the person who demanded it was capable of abusing the permission. The inquisitor-general of Spain acted with more prudence; he took secret informations on the conduct of the solicitor, and required him to state in writing the object of his demand, and the subject on which he wished to consult the prohibited books. Where the permission granted was general, the books mentioned in the edicts were excepted. In this sense the works of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Diderot, d'Alembert, Voltaire, and several other modern philosophers, among whom was Filangieri, were excepted from the privilege. During the last years of the Inquisition, the permissions granted by the Court of Rome did not defend the persons who received them from the inquisitorial actions; they were subject to revision, and the inquisitor-general did not authorize the use of them without great difficulty, and as if the Court of Rome had never granted them.