ly had dealt a sore
blow to liberty of thought and the free expression of opinion.
"Philosophy," said Grimm, by philosophy, as I have said, meaning
Liberalism, "will long feel the effect of the rising of opinion which
this author has caused by his book; and for having described too freely
a morality that is bad and false in itself, M. Helvetius will have to
reproach himself with all the restraints that are now sure to be imposed
on the few men of lofty genius who still are left to us, whose destiny
was to enlighten their fellows, and to spread truth over the
earth."[142]

At the beginning of 1759 the procureur-general laid an information
before the court against Helvetius's book, against half a dozen minor
publications, and finally against the Encyclopaedia. The _De l'Esprit_
was alleged to be a mere abridgment of the Encyclopaedia, and the
Encyclopaedia was denounced as being the opprobrium of the nation by its
impious maxims and its hostility to morals and religion. The court
appointed nine commissaries to examine the seven volumes, suspending
their further sale or delivery in the meanwhile. When the commissaries
sent in their report a month later, the parliament was dissatisfied
with its tenour, and appointed four new examiners, two of them being
theologians and two of them lawyers. Before the new censors had time to
do their work, the Council of State interposed with an arbitrary decree
(March 1759) suppressing the privilege which had been conceded in 1746;
prohibiting the sale of the seven volumes already printed, and the
printing of any future volumes under pain of exemplary punishment.[143]
The motive for this intervention has never been made plain. One view is
that the king's government resented the action of the law courts, and
that the royal decree was only an episode in the quarrel then raging
between the crown and the parliaments. Another opinion is that
Malesherbes or Choiseul was anxious to please the dauphin and the
Jesuit party at Versailles. The most probable explanation is that the
authorities were eager to silence one at least of the three elements of
opposition, the Jansenists, the lawyers, and the philosophers,--who
were then distracting the realm. The two former were beyond their
direct reach. They threw themselves upon the foe who happened to be
most accessible.

The government, however, had no intention of finally exterminating an
enemy who might at some future day happen to be a convenient all