CHAP. XIII.: Of Writings.

IN writings there is something more permanent than in words; but, when they are no way preparative to high-treason, they cannot amount to that charge.

And yet Augustus and Tiberius subjected satirical writers to the same punishment as for having violated the law of majesty; Augustus Tacitus’s Annals, book 1. This continued under the following reigns. See the first law in the Code de famosis libellis. ^†425, because of some libels that had been written against persons of the first quality; Tiberius, because of those which he suspected to have been written against himself. Nothing was more fatal to Roman liberty. Cremutius Cordus was accused of having called Cassius, in his annals, the last of the Romans Tacit. Annal. book 4. ^†426.

Satirical writings are hardly known in despotic governments, where dejection of mind on the one hand, and ignorance on the other, afford neither abilities, nor will, to write. In democracies they are not hindered, for the very same reason which causes them to be prohibited in monarchies: being generally levelled against men of power and authority, they flatter the malignancy of the people, who are the governing party. In monarchies they are forbidden; but rather as a subject of civil animadversion, than as a capital crime. They may amuse the general malevolence, please the malcontents, diminish the envy against public employments, give the

But no government is so averse to satirical writings as the aristocratical. There the magistrates are petty sovereigns, but not great enough to despise affronts. If, in a monarchy, a satirical stroke is designed against the prince, he is placed on such an eminence that it does not reach him; but an aristocratical lord is pierced to the very heart. Hence the decemvirs, who formed an aristocracy, punished satirical writings with death The law of the twelve tables. ^†427.