rility. It was requisite that competent judges should have time to
read it, that they might correct the errors of the fickle multitude.
That small public which teaches, dictated to that large public which
listens to hear, how it ought to think and speak; and the suffrages of
men of abilities formed only one voice over all Europe.

The open and secret enemies of letters and philosophy now united their
darts against this work. Hence that multitude of pamphlets discharged
against the author, weapons which we shall not draw from oblivion. If
those authors were not forgotten, it might be believed that the 'Spirit
of Laws' was written amid a nation of barbarians.

M. de Montesquieu despised the obscure criticisms of the curious. He
ranked them with those weekly newspapers whose encomiums have no
authority, and their darts no effect; which indolent readers run over
without believing, and in which sovereigns are insulted without knowing
it. But he was not equally indifferent about those principles of
irreligion which they accused him of having propagated. By ignoring such
reproaches he would have seemed to deserve them, and the importance of
the object made him shut his eyes to the meanness of his adversaries.
The ultra-zealous, afraid of that light which letters diffuse, not to
the prejudice of religion, but to their own disadvantage, took different
ways of attacking him; some, by a trick as puerile as cowardly, wrote
fictitious letters to themselves; others, attacking him anonymously, had
afterwards fallen by the ears among themselves. M. de Montesquieu
contented himself with making an example of the most extravagant. This
was the author of an anonymous periodical paper, who accused M. de
Montesquieu of Spinozism and deism (two imputations which are
incompatible); of having followed the system of Pope (of which there is
not a word in his works); of having quoted Plutarch, who is not a
Christian author; of not having spoken of original sin and of grace. In
a word, he pretended that the 'Spirit of Laws' was a production of the
constitution _Unigenitus_; a preposterous idea. Those who understand M.
de Montesquieu and Clement XI. may judge, by this accusation, of
the rest.

This enemy procured the philosopher an addition of glory as a man of
letters: the 'Defense of the Spirit of Laws' appeared. This work, for
its moderation, truth, delicacy of ridicule, is a model. M. de
Montesquieu might easily have made his adversary odious;