the earlier part of the century freethought had been disseminated
largely by way of manuscripts [1010] and reprints of foreign books in
translation; but from the middle onwards, despite denunciations and
prohibitions, new books multiply. To the policy of tacit toleration
imposed by Malesherbes a violent end was temporarily put in 1757,
when the Jesuits obtained a proclamation of the death penalty
against all writers who should attack the Christian religion,
directly or indirectly. It was doubtless under the menace of this
decree that Deslandes, before dying in 1757, caused to be drawn
up by two notaries an acte by which he disavowed and denounced not
only his Grands hommes morts en plaisantant but all his other works,
whether printed or in MS., in which he had "laid down principles
or sustained sentiments contrary to the spirit of religion." [1011]
But in 1764, on the suppression of the Jesuits, there was a vigorous
resumption of propaganda. "There are books," writes Voltaire in 1765,
"of which forty years ago one would not have trusted the manuscript
to one's friends, and of which there are now published six editions
in eighteen months." [1012] Voltaire single-handed produced a
library; and d'Holbach is credited with at least a dozen freethinking
treatises, every one remarkable in its day. But there were many more
combatants. The reputation of Voltaire has overshadowed even that of
his leading contemporaries, and theirs and his have further obscured
that of the lesser men; but a list of miscellaneous freethinking works
by French writers during the century, up to the Revolution, will serve
to show how general was the activity after 1750. It will be seen that
very little was published in France in the period in which English
deism was most fecund. A noticeable activity of publication begins
about 1745. But it was when the long period of chronic warfare ended
for France with the peace of Paris (1763); when she had lost India
and North America; when she had suppressed the Jesuit order (1764);
and when England had in the main turned from intellectual interests to
the pursuit of empire and the development of manufacturing industry,
that the released French intelligence [1013] turned with irresistible
energy to the rational criticism of established opinions. The following
table is thus symbolic of the whole century's development:--