and
prepare healthy instruction by bringing history down to the year VIII."
But this instruction can be healthy only through a series of preliminary
and convergent judgments, insinuating into all minds the final approval
and well-founded admiration of the existing regime. Accordingly, the
historian must feel at each line" the defects of the ancient regime,
"the influence of the court of Rome, of confessional tickets, of the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of the ridiculous marriage of Louis
XIV. with Madame de Maintenon, the perpetual disorder in the finances,
the pretensions of the parliament, the want of rules and leadership in
the administration,.. in such a way that one breathes on reaching the
epoch when one enjoys the benefits of that which is due to the unity of
the laws, administration and territory." The constant feebleness of
the government under Louis XIV, even, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.,
"should inspire the need of sustaining the newly accomplished work
and its acquired preponderance." On the 18th of Brumaire (19-11-1799),
France came into port; the Revolution must be spoken of only as a final,
fatal and inevitable tempest.[6250] "When that work, well done and
written in a right direction, appears, nobody will have the will or the
patience to write another, especially when, far from being encouraged by
the police, one will be discouraged by it." In this way, the government
which, in relation to the young, has awarded to itself the monopoly
of teaching, awards to itself in relation to adults, the monopoly of
history.

V. On Censorship under Napoleon.

Measures against writers so called and popularizers.
--Censorship, control of theaters, publications and printing.
--Extent and minuteness of the repression.--Persistency in
direction and impulsion.--The logical completeness and
beauty of the whole system his final object.--How he
accomplishes his own destruction.

If Napoleon in this manner takes precautions against those who think, it
is only because their thoughts, should they be written down, might reach
the public,[6251] and only the sovereign alone has the right to talk in
public. Between writer and readers, every communication is intercepted
beforehand by a triple and quadruple line of defenses through which
a long, tortuous and narrow wicket is the only passage, and where
the manuscript, like a bundle of suspicious goods, is overhauled and
repeatedly verif