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country; Rousseau placing an order in Paris and Geneva for
a book to be printed in Holland; Montesquieu feeling obliged
to have the "Spirit of the Laws" printed outside of his country;
Voltaire hardly enjoying any security in his final years, when he
was at the apogee of his glory, and only with great difficulty
finding a shelter in the outskirts of France; the marquis of
Mirabeau being deprived of his freedom for having spoken with
too little respect about the indirect taxation [gabelle], about
the tax on those who have drunk too much; a citizen exiled
for having dared to express a heretic opinion on the freedom of
the cattle trade; the author of the "Philosophy of Nature"
enduring a criminal trial for having preached about God
and morality in a style unknown in the attics of the Jansenists
[convulsionnaires]; the author of the "Philosophical History of
Trade" sentenced without even making sure that he was actually
guilty. In a word, if one excludes some poets who were nothing
else but poets, one would not be able to find in the countries
where there is no freedom of press a single famous man who hadn't
undergone some form of persecution.