pain,
Figaro affirmed that at Madrid the liberty of the press meant that, so
long as an author spoke neither of authority, nor of public worship, nor
of politics, nor of morality, nor of men in power, nor of the opera, nor
of any other exhibition, nor of any one who was concerned in any thing, he
might print what be pleased. The lawyers were reproached with a scrupulous
adherence to forms, and a connivance at needless delays, which put money
into their pockets; and the nobles, with thinking that, as long as they
gave themselves the trouble to be born, society had no right to expect
from them any further useful action. But such satire was too general, it
might have been thought, to cause uneasiness, much more to do specific
injury to any particular individual, or to any company or profession.
Figaro himself is represented as saying that none but little men feared
little writings.[3] And one of the advisers whom King Louis consulted as
to the possibility of any mischief arising from the performance of the
play, is said to have expressed his opinion in the form of an apothegm,
that "none but dead men were killed by jests." The author might even have
argued that his keenest satire had been poured upon those national
enemies, the English, when he declared what has been sometimes regarded as
the national oath to be the pith and marrow of the English language, the
open sesame to English society, the key to unlock the English heart, and
to obtain the judicious swearer all that he could desire.[4]

And an English writer, with English notions of the liberty of the press,
would hardly have thought it worth while to notice such an affair at all,
did he not feel bound to submit his judgment to that of the French
themselves. And if their view be correct, almost every institution in
France must have been a dead man past all hopes of recovery, since the
French historical writers, to whatever party they belong, are unanimous in
declaring that it was from this play that many of the oldest institutions
in the country received their death-blow, and that Beaumarchais was at
once the herald and the pioneer of the approaching Revolution.

Paris had scarcely cooled down after this excitement, when its attention
was more agreeably attracted by the arrival of a king, Gustavus III. of
Sweden. He had paid a visit to France in 1771, which had been cut short by
the sudden death of his father, necessitating his immediate return to his
own country to