verything concerning books
or newspapers.
All circulation of foreign papers is prohibited, until they have
previously obtained the stamp of approbation from the grand literary
censor, Barrere. Any person offending against this law is most severely
punished. An American gentlemen, of the name of Campbell, was last
spring sent to the Temple for lending one of your old daily papers to a
person who lodged in the same hotel with him. After an imprisonment of
ten weeks he made some pecuniary sacrifices to obtain his liberty, but
was carried to Havre, under an escort of gendarmes, put on board a
neutral vessel, and forbidden, under pain of death, ever to set his foot
on French ground again. An American vessel was, about the same time,
confiscated at Bordeaux, and the captain and crew imprisoned, because
some English books were found on board, in which Bonaparte, Talleyrand,
Fouche, and some of our great men were rather ill-treated. The crew have
since been liberated, but the captain has been brought here, and is still
in the Temple. The vessel and the cargo have been sold as lawful
captures, though the captain has proved from the names written in the
books that they belonged to a passenger. A young German student in
surgery, who came here to improve himself, has been nine months in the
same state prison, for having with him a book, printed in Germany during
Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, wherein the chief and the undertaking
are ridiculed. His mother, the widow of a clergyman, hearing of the
misfortune of her son, came here, and has presented to the Emperor and
Empress half a dozen petitions, without any effect whatever, and has
almost ruined herself and her other children by the expenses of the
journey. During a stay of four months she has not yet been able to gain
admittance into the Temple, to visit or see her son, who perhaps expired
in tortures, or died brokenhearted before she came here.
A dozen copies of a funeral sermon on the Duc d'Enghien had found their
way here, and were secretly circulated for some time; but at last the
police heard of it, and every person who was suspected of having read
them was arrested. The number of these unfortunate persons, according to
some, amounted to one hundred and thirty, while others say that they were
only eighty-four, of whom twelve died suddenly in the Temple, and the
remainder were transported to Cayenne; upwards of half of them were
women, some of the ci-devant hi
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