DESMOULINS (Camille). Autograph manuscript... - Lot 34 - Osenat

DESMOULINS (Camille). Autograph manuscript entitled " De la liberté de la presse ". 1 p. 1/4 in-4 on azure paper, some marginal damages. ON A SUBJECT PARTICULARLY DEAR TO THE HEART OF THIS LIBELLIST AND PUBLICIST WHO USED IT ABUNDANTLY UNTIL HE DIED. Camille Desmoulins professed for a long time an absolute faith in the freedom of the press, "the best retrenchment of free peoples against the invasion of despotism", considering that even anonymous libels could be justified as useful to the weak to counterbalance the power of the elites. However, he expressed some reservations after the Champ de Mars massacre in the summer of 1791, which made him doubt the people's aptitude for liberty, and he did not protest against the censorship of the royalist press. He treated in particular the freedom of the press in his newspaper Le Vieux Cordelier, particularly in the n° 7 of February 3, 1794 (distributed only after the Terror). A PARAGRAPH OF THE PRESENT FRAGMENT (from "Un scélérat couvert d'infâmie" to "l'éloquence de Démosthène") WAS PUBLISHED twice in 1789, WITHOUT AN AUTHOR'S NAME: on the one hand under the title "Idées sur les libelles, la liberté de la presse, les gens de lettres, &c. "in a collective collection published by Claude-Sixte-Sautreau de Marsy, Tablettes d'un curieux, ou variétés historiques, littéraires et morales ; on the other hand under the title " Sur la liberté de la presse et les gens de lettres " in the collection Le Pour et le contre sur la liberté de la presse. By an impartial. The presence here of this paragraph means either that the text of 1789 is by Camille Desmoulins, or that the latter appropriated a passage of it without indicating its source. "HONOR IS CERTAINLY NOT IN THE POWER OF A LIBELLIST SO THAT HE CAN DISPENSE IT TO HIS GRE. The true honor, it is the public recognition, it is the consideration attached to the services which one rendered to his fatherland, it is the interior feeling and the conscience of these services which alone would be enough to console of the public ingratitude the one who rendered them... ASSUREDLY, SATIRE AND LIBEL WILL NOT TAKE AWAY PUBLIC RECOGNITION FROM THE ONE WHO IS TRULY ENTITLED TO IT. Do we not even have before our eyes libels, so stinging that one trembles to be praised. Wouldn't a good citizen think he had lost his honor if he saw his praise in the Acts of the Apostles [Jean-Gabriel Peltier's satirical monarchist pamphleteer newspaper]? "A villain covered with infamy attacks me, says Seneca, I ask myself at once: do you feel hurt? No, be quiet, your conscience is for you, be quiet and keep quiet. Be quiet, do you want to fight with a scoundrel [?] Fight for important truths, leave your defense there, WRITE USEFUL WORKS, LIVE WELL AND YOUR LIFE WILL JUSTIFY YOU BETTER THAN DEMOSTHEN'S ELOQUENCE"... ". He also speaks of the susceptibility of writers, more sensitive to criticism than to praise ("Voltaire's bile against his detractors..."). Provenance: "SSP" (stamp).