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The public expresses itself badly when it asks for a law to
accord or authorise the freedom of the press. It is not due
to a law that the citizens think, talk, write and publish
their thoughts: it is due to their natural rights; rights
which men have brought in association, and for the maintenance
of which they have established the law itself and all the
public means which serve it.
      The art of book printing could not have arisen other than
in a social state, that is true; but if the social state, while
facilitating to a man the invention of useful instruments,
extends the use of his freedom, then it is not that this or
that use could ever be regarded as a gift from the law. The
law is not a master who accords good deeds gratuitously; in
itself, freedom embraces all that does not belong to others;
the law is only there to impede that it gets lost; it is only
a protection mechanism [institution protectrice], formed by
this same freedom anterior to everything, and for which
everything exists in a social order.
      But at the same time, if one wants the law to protect
indeed the freedom of the citizen, it is necessary that it
knows how to repress the attacks which may be lodged against it.
Thus it has to mark in the naturally free acts of each
individual, the point beyond which they will become harmful
to the rights of others; there, it has to place signals, set
limits, forbid to pass them, and punish the bold one who
dares to disobey. These are the proper and guarding functions
of the law.
      The freedom of the press, like all freedoms, thus must
have its legal limits. Armed with this principle, we have started
with courage the work to which you have ordered us to devote
ourselves.
      First, we have had to begin by examining how published
works can harm the rights of others.
      We have had to specify these cases, to assess the severity
of their legal offence, and for each of them to fix its fine.

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Finally, after having characterised these offences, regulated
the fines and indicted the accused, we have determined the
instruction and the judgment by which they have to be
condemned or acquitted.
      Such is the process we have adopted in the project of
law that we offer you at this moment. Its real name is: "Draft
of a law against the offences which can be committed by way of
printing and by the publication of writings, engravings, etc."
      Many people think that it is by balancing the advantages
and inconveniences of the freedom of the press, that one has
to trace the right line of demarcation between what can be
defended in this genre, and what should not be. These people
are mistaken; the true role of a legislator is not to negotiate
like a skilful conciliator; the legislator, always placed
before the principles, instead of listening to a political
address, has to be severe and immutable like justice itself;
thus he will not occupy himself with comparing good and evil,
to compensate the one with the other in a law of pure
conciliation. If one asks him, not to favour, but to limit
the exercise of an unspecified freedom, he will know that only
the evil is within his competence, that he will not even have
any public advantage resulting from this freedom, it suffices
that it contains nothing harmful in order for him to have to
respect it; and that in this genre, in one word, indifference
is sacred for him like usefulness.
      Moreover, recalling here the rigour of the principles, we
have to remark that we have obeyed to a consideration of the
circumstances, rather than to a real need to invoke to the
rescue of our subject forces which one can easily do without;
because without any doubt you, Sirs, do not regard the use of
the press as an indifferent matter: on the contrary, who could
calculate all the advantages which we are indebted to it? and
which legislator, no matter what spirit he is being guided by,
would dare, from this point of view, to want to suspend or
impede the action for a strongly useful cause as well, at least
out of absolute necessity, being to bring justice to everyone?
      See the effects of the printing business in the reports
with the

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ordinary citizen; it knew how to fertilise his work, his industry,
to multiply his riches, to facilitate and embellish his exchanges,
his activities as a consumer, his relations with society, to
ameliorate more and more his intellectual and physical abilities,
to help him in all his projects, to ally itself for all his actions,
for all his thoughts, finally to serve even the most isolated man,
by revealing to him in his solitude, thousands and thousands of
means towards pleasure and happiness.
      In its political reports, the same cause changes into a fertile
source of national prosperity: it becomes a guardian and true
safeguard of public freedom. This is indeed the fault of governments
if they did not know, if they did not want to reap all fruits which
it promised them. Do you want to reform abuses? It will prepare the
way for you, it will purify, thus to explain, to you, this multitude
of obstacles that ignorance, personal interest and bad faith attempt
to raise in your path. By the torchlight of public opinion, all the
enemies of the nation and of equality, who also have to be
enlightened, hasten to withdraw their shameful intentions. Do you
need a good institution? Let the press serve you as precursor,
let the writings of enlightened citizens prepare the spirits to
feel the need for the good which you want them to do. And, so that
one may pay attention to it, it is thus that one prepares good laws:
it is thus that they produce all their effect, and that one saves it
for men, who, alas! never rejoice too early, the long training of
centuries.
      Printing has changed the fate of Europe; it will change the
face of the world. I consider it a new ability added to the most
beautiful abilities of mankind; through it, freedom stops being
tightened by little republican aggregations; it spreads across
kingdoms, across empires. Printing is, for the vastness of space,
what the voice of the orator was for the public marketplace of
Athens and Rome; through it, the thoughts of a man of genius are
simultaneously carried to all places, it strikes, as it were, the
ear of the entire human race. Everywhere the

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secret desire of freedom, which is never entirely extinguished
in the heart of a man, he cherishes it, this thought, with love,
and embraces it a number of times with fury; it mixes, it merges
with all his sentiments. And what can such an incentive not
achieve when it acts simultaneously on millions of souls! Philosophers
and publicists are too hasty to discourage us, by stating that
freedom can only belong to small peoples. They did not know how to
read the future but through the past, and when a new cause of
perfectibility, thrown onto our planet, prophesied to them extraordinary
changes among mankind, it is only ever in what has already been that
they sought to behold what might be, nay, what ought to be. Let us
uplift ourselves to the highest hopes, knowing that the vastest
territory, that the most numerous population, that all lends itself
to freedom. Indeed, why would an instrument which will manage to put
mankind into a community of opinion, to move and animate it with one
sentiment, to unite it by the bond of a truly social constitution, not
be called upon to indefinitely increase the domain of freedom, and
one day to lend to nature itself the most secure means to fulfil its
true destination? Because, without doubt, nature intends all men to
be equally free and happy.
      Thus, you do not reduce, Sirs, the means of communication between
men: the instruction and the new truths resemble all sorts of products;
they are due to the work. However, one knows that, in any kind of work,
it is the freedom to make, and the ability of the flow which supports,
excites and multiplies the production: thus, to badly obstruct the
freedom of the press, that would be to attack the fruits of genius right
in the bud, that would be to destroy part of the Enlightenment which is
destined to bring about the glory and riches of your posterity.
      How much more natural would it, on the contrary, especially when
one shows, with reason, much interest in the progress of commerce, to
favour all these forces which are most important for you, the commerce
of thought! But it does not concern

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at this moment a law to encourage useful use, but about a
law to repress the abuses of the press.
      Your committee would have wished to present to you, in
a preliminary development, the spirit of the principle parts
of that which it proposes to you and the even particular
reasons which directed the drafting of the majority of the
articles. We lacked time, and even this undertaking had us
engaged in a too voluminous work. You already know the general
plan and the process of our work; with regard to the details,
the discussion will bring them out and will explain them much
better than we would be able to do in advance.
      We will satisfy ourselves at this stage by warning you,
Sirs, that we did not intend to make a law for another order
of things than the one which currently exists: because it is
for this moment that you demand it. This present state of
affairs is neither the old one, neither the new one; that is
to say, that your new constitution has already necessarily
brought with it partial reforms in your legislation; and on
the other hand, it is impossible that this legislation would
not soon receive in almost all its parts, and certainly as a
whole, very considerable changes and ameliorations: this
twofold considerations had to strike us and guide us. As a
consequence, we have believed to have to put as a first
article, that the present law will not have any effect but
during two years; at that time, it will be quite easy for
the legislative body to decree one for a longer duration, if
the new code is not yet completed or promulgated; but if the
French have received the great benefit of a uniform and
simple legislation, and of a prompt and precise procedure,
it is evident that your particular law on the press does not
have to stay behind, that it has to benefit, like all the
others, of this progress of the social art.
      With regard to the present, we have permitted ourselves
everything which the changes already in operation among us,
could allow us to try. Thus, for example, we have produced
in our law a beginning of procedure and of judgment by juries.
This institution is the true guarantor of the individual and
public freedom against the despotism of the most frightening
type of powers.

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It will be essential to employ sooner or later the ministry of juries
for the decision on all issues of a judiciary nature: this truth is
already familiar to you, you only believe that its execution might
be premature at this moment: but this anxiety cannot stop you, when
it concerns offences of the press, that is to say, of this part of
the judiciary order which lends itself most easily to the institution
of juries, and which escapes all inconveniences which could result
from it in any other matter. Indeed, we pray you to observe firstly that
it is only in the principal cities of the kingdom that there are
printing businesses; and where the book trade is being conducted, and
that as a consequence it will not be difficult to find there juries
educated and well-equipped to decide correctly on the issue of offences
of the press. In the second place, it concerns here a law which can
only interest the smallest part of the population, that is to say this
class of citizens whose enlightenment will soon become accustomed to a
change of which they already feel and recognize the usefulness. Finally,
we pray you to consider that the majority of the offences of the press
are, by their nature, real offences of police, which adapt extremely
well to the summary instruction; and you will hardly be surprised, on
the one hand, that we let them judge as a last instance [definitivement]
at the first tribunal; and on the other hand, that we drew it aside
in the written procedure, at least dating from the time when the
instruction could be public and where the jury members will be called.
      If all these reasons would not suffice to enrich, from today onwards,
this part of our procedure of the beautiful institution of juries, it is
seriously to be feared that one has to give it up for ever; and by losing
it, we cannot repeat it enough, one would also have to refrain from ever
taking precautionary measures against the arbitrariness of the judiciary
power.
      The decision on the issue by a jury is also the best response that
we may give to those who would find that there remains enough vagueness
in some of the first articles. The law that we propose to you is not
perfect, it is not even as good as it will be easy to make it in two
years; you know

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the reason: it should have been linked to the actual order of things;
at the same time we would be almost giving away all of our thoughts,
if we were to state that even in its imperfect present state, this law
appears to us, in this area, the best of any such laws that exist
anywhere else in the world.

Project of law against the offences which can be committed by way
of printing and by the publication of writings and engravings, etc.

ART. I. The present law will only have effect during two years,
counting from the day of its promulgation.

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XIV. The progress of the enlightenment, and by consequence the public
utility unite themselves around the ideas of distributive justice, to
demand that the property of a work be preserved for the author by law.
As a consequence, every person guilty of having printed a book during
the life of an author, or less than ten years after his death, without
his explicit consent by writing, or that of his assignee, will be
declared a counterfeiter; and as such, he will be sentenced to damages
and interests, which will not exceed the value of thousand copies of
the counterfeited work: moreover, the counterfeited copies which can
be seized will be returned to the author, and paid to those which will
have received them in good faith, at the cost of him which will be
judged to be responsible for the furtive edition; finally, the printing
presses themselves of the counterfeiter can be confiscated and sold to
the profit of the Bureau for the Poor.
      XV. The previous article does not apply to editions made in
France, of works originally printed in foreign countries. Regarding
foreign editions of works originally printed in France, and of which
the author or his assignees still retain the property, they will be
treated as counterfeit, those who will sell them as counterfeiters,
according to article XIV.
      XVI. Will however be excluded from this law, during two years,
the booksellers that have at this moment in their stores old editions,
furtive or foreign of works of which the authors need to be regarded
as proprietors in France, under the condition that these booksellers
would make, in the period of fifteen days, their declaration to the
police of their municipality, of the quantity of the counterfeited
copies, or of the foreign edition that they still have to sell, and
that they subject themselves to paying to the author a retribution
proportionate to the number and value of the copies and determined by
the municipality.
      XVII. In the case where it will be proven that the counterfeiting
has been committed by perfidy, be it by the printer charged with the
first

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printing, be it by some other trusted agent, this printer
and his agents will be punished according to the previous
article, and in addition by damages and interests which will
not exceed a half-year of their income, wages or salaries.
      XVIII. Theatre pieces, be they printed or handwritten,
cannot be performed in any public theatre, during the life of
the author, or less than five years after his death, without
his explicit consent by writing, or by that of his assignee.
Each violation of this present law will be punished by damages-
interests of a value equal to the total receipts of the
performance. But, five years after the death of the author,
all his pieces will be deemed the public property of all theatres.
      XIX. The articles 14, 15, 16 and 17, concern also printed
music, and article 18 is communal to theatre music, printed or
handwritten.
      XX. The comedians who are in possession [of copies which enable
them] to perform works of music and stage plays, composed by living
authors and without their consent, will be obliged to obtain this
consent; otherwise they will be held liable to pay to the author a
retribution which will be regulated by the municipality; and in the
latter case, the cashier of the theatre, or any other person indicated
by the author, will be the depository of this retribution, to render
account about it to the author.
      XXI. Every transfer of privilege made by the author before the
present era, will subsist until its expiration; after which the author,
if he is still alive, or his assignee, if the author has not been dead
for more than ten years, resume the property of their work to enjoy it
according to the terms of this law. Moreover, the booksellers or others
who find themselves at the present moment having acquired, for
no matter which specific work, a privilege for a fixed term, will
continue to enjoy it during the whole of its duration, even in the
case where the ten years of its existence, accorded by Article 14,
will not have sufficed to exhaust the privilege.
      XXII. Those who print, perform, sell or distribute editions,
works or engraving already

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having been convicted on the basis of one or another of the
preceding articles, will incur fines twice as heavy as those
already imposed by the judgement which they are defying.

[...]




Translation by: Freya Baetens (pp. 2-8, 11-13)