Of course, the inspection of publications is still more rigorous and
more repressive, more exacting and more persistent. - At the theatre,
where the assembled spectators become enthusiastic through the quick
contagion of their sensibilities, the police cut out of the
"Heraclius" of Corneille and the "Athalie" of Racine[56] from twelve
to twenty-five consecutive lines and patch up the broken passages as
carefully as possible with lines or parts of lines of their own. - On
the periodical press, on the newspaper which has acquired a body of
readers and which exercises an influence and groups its subscribers
according to an opinion, if not political, at least philosophic and
literary, there is a compression which goes even as far as utter ruin.
From the beginning of the Consulate,[57] sixty out of seventy-three
political journals are suppressed; in 1811, the thirteen that still
existed are reduced to four and the editors-in-chief are appointed by
the minister of police. The property of these journals, on the other
hand, is confiscated, while the Emperor, who had taken it, concedes
it, one third to his police and the other two thirds to people of the
court or litt?rateurs who are his functionaries or his creatures.
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