The _Journal des Débats_, in the first rank of the periodical press, under the intelligent direction of the Bertins, had already been favored with a special inspector, whose duty was to superintend its editing, and to whom the proprietors of the paper were forced to pay 12,000 francs a year. Fouché had menaced the other papers with this measure of discipline, by ordering them to "put into quarantine all news disagreeable or disadvantageous to France." This patriotic prudence did not long suffice for the master. "Let Fiévée know that I am very dissatisfied with the manner in which he edits his paper," he wrote, on the 6th March, 1808. "It is ridiculous that, contrary to the rules of good sense, he still continues to believe all that the German papers say to frighten us about the Russians. It is ridiculous to say that they put 500,000 men in the field, when, for the coalition itself, Russia only furnished 100,000 men, while Austria furnished 300,000. It is my intention that he should only speak of the Russians to humiliate them, to enfeeble their forces, to prove how their trashy reputation in military matters, and the praises of their armies, are without foundation." And the same day to Talleyrand: "It is my intention that the political articles in the _Moniteur_ should be guided by the foreign relations. And after seeing how they are done for a month, I shall prohibit the other papers talking politics, otherwise than by copying the articles of the _Moniteur_." We have known the dangers and the formidable effects of an unlimited liberty of the press. Never was it more licentious than when just recovered from a system arbitrarily oppressive. The fire which appears to be extinct smoulders under the ashes, to shortly break out with new fury. The thirty-three years of constitutional régime which France had enjoyed, powerfully contributed to the moderation of men's acts, and even their words, at the time of the revolution of 1848. The outburst of invectives and anger which saluted the fall of the Emperor Napoleon, had been slowly accumulated during the long silence imposed under his reign.