liberty of the
press represents a power that is not familiar to those who know its
weakness and its strength, who have had experience of Swift and
Bolingbroke and Junius. Maury once said, "We have a free press: we
have everything." In 1812, when Napoleon watched the grand army
crossing the Niemen to invade Russia, and whistled the tune of
Malbrook, he interrupted his tune to exclaim, "And yet all that is not
equal to the songs of Paris!" Chateaubriand afterwards said that, with
the liberty of the press, there was no abuse he would not undertake to
destroy. For he wrote French as it had never been written, and the
magnificent roll of his sentences caught the ear of his countrymen
with convincing force. When, in 1824, he was dismissed from the
Foreign Office, his friend, the editor of the _Journal des Debats_,
called on the Prime Minister Villele and warned him, "We have
overthrown your predecessor, and we shall be strong enough to
overthrow you." Villele replied, "You succeeded against him by aid of
royalism: you cannot succeed against me but by aid of revolution."
Both prophecies came true. The alliance of Chateaubriand with the
newspaper turned out the Ministry in 1827, and the Monarchy in 1830.

In September 1789, the liberty of the press was only four months old,
and the reign of opinion was beginning on the Continent. They fancied
that it was an invincible force, and a complete security for human
rights. It was invaluable if it secured right without weakening power,
like the other contrivances of Liberalism. They thought that when men
were safe from the force above them, they required no saving from the
influence around them. Opinion finds its own level, and a man yields
easily and not unkindly to what surrounds him daily. Pressure from
equals is not to be confounded with persecution by superiors. It is
right that the majority, by degrees, should absorb the minority. The
work of limiting authority had been accomplished by the Rights of Man.
The work of creating authority was left to the Constitution. In this
way men of varying opinions were united in the conclusion that the
powers emanating from the people ought not to be needlessly divided.

Besides Sieyes, who found ideas, and Talleyrand, who found expedients,
several groups were, for the time, associated with the party which was
managed by Duport. There were some of the most eminent jurists, eager
to reform the many systems of law and custom that prevailed in F