02.07.44 Refer to the passage.
What important belief did writings like Voltaire's impart to
the people who started the Atlantic revolutions?
"As you have it in your power, sir, to do some service to
letters, I implore you not to clip the wings of our writers
so closely, nor to turn into barn-door fowls those who,
allowed a start, might become eagles; reasonable liberty
permits the mind to soar-slavery makes it creep.
Had there been a literary censorship in Rome, we should
have had to-day neither Horace, Juvenal, nor the
philosophical works of Cicero. If Milton, Dryden, Pope,
and Locke had not been free, England would have had
neither poets nor philosophers; there is something
positively Turkish in proscribing printing; and hampering
it is proscription. Be content with severely repressing
[defamatory] libels, for they are crimes: but so long as
those infamous calottes are boldly published, and so
many other unworthy and despicable productions, at
least allow Bayle to circulate in France, and do not put
O That they should respect ancient institutions and
traditional practices of government
O That they should allow the censorship of publications
that did not support the government
O That they should read for themselves poetry and
philosophy derived from classical sources
O That they should decide for themselves whether their
governments were working for their interests
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