files of newspapers for information will find nothing but what, under the overwhelming terror of the moment, the ruling faction might choose to dictate to the trembling journalists:[1] and it is additionally important to observe, that, as it is the nature and instinct of fear to disguise and conceal itself, so, during the whole of this diversified yet unbroken reign of terror, there is nothing which all parties, both the terrorists and terrified, were so anxious to hide as the omnipotent influence under which they all acted. When we, in a former essay, noticed this memorable fact (and we have good reason to say that it cannot be too often repeated), we gave a striking example of that palsy of the press. It is the fashion to call the Moniteur the best history of the Revolution, and its pages are universally appealed to as indisputable authority—and justly, as far as it goes; but the Moniteur itself is a very imperfect chronicle, and, even before it became the official paper, never ventured to say a syllable not actually dictated, or at least sanctioned, by the predominant factions. For instance, on the 22nd of January, 1793, the day after the king's murder—a somewhat remarkable event, not unworthy, we should have supposed, a paragraph in a newspaper—the Moniteur does not so much as allude to it; and ekes out its meagre column of Parisian intelligence by a
- ↑ The press had a certain degree of freedom during the earlier days of the Directory, but on the 18th Fructidor (4th Sept. 1797) forty-two journals were violently suppressed, their proprietors and editors were all transported, and their properties confiscated. From that till the Restoration there was no more liberty of the press in Paris than in Constantinople—as little indeed as under the new Empire.
