helter that it gave to the French thinkers in
the seventeenth, including Descartes, the greatest of them all. The
monstrous tediousness of printing a book at Amsterdam or the Hague,
the delay, loss, and confusion in receiving and transmitting the
proofs, and the subterranean character of the entire process,
including the circulation of the book after it was once fairly
printed, were as grievous to Rousseau as to authors of more impetuous
temper. He agreed with Rey, for instance, the Amsterdam printer, to
sell him the Social Contract for 1000 francs. The manuscript had then
to be cunningly conveyed to Amsterdam. Rousseau wrote it out in very
small characters, sealed it carefully up, and entrusted it to the care
of the chaplain of the Dutch embassy, who happened to be a native of
Vaud. In passing the barrier, the packet fell into the hands of the
officials. They tore it open and examined it, happily unconscious that
they were handling the most explosive kind of gunpowder that they had
ever meddled with. It was not until the chaplain claimed it in the
name of ambassadorial privilege, that the manuscript was allowed to go
on its way to the press.[79] Rousseau repeats a hundred times, not
only in the Confessions, but also in letters to his friends, how
resolutely and carefully he avoided any evasion of the laws of the
country in which he lived. The French government was anxious enough on
all grounds to secure for France the production of the books of which
France was the great consumer, but the severity of its censorship
prevented this.[80] The introduction of the books, when printed, was
tolerated or connived at, because the country would hardly have
endured to be deprived of the enjoyment of its own literature. By a
greater inconsistency the reprinting of a book which had once found
admission into the country, was also connived at. Thus M. de
Malesherbes, out of friendship for Rousseau, wished to have an edition
of the New Heloisa printed in France, and sold for the benefit of the
author. That he should have done so is a curious illustration of the
low morality engendered by a repressive system imperfectly carried
out. For Rousseau had sold the book to Rey. Rey had treated with a
French bookseller in the usual way, that is, had sent him half the
edition printed, the bookseller paying either in cash or other books
for all the copies he received. Therefore to print an independent
edition in Paris was to injure, not Rey the fo