The _De l'Esprit_ was alleged to be a mere abridgment of the Encyclopaedia, and the Encyclopaedia was denounced as being the opprobrium of the nation by its impious maxims and its hostility to morals and religion.

The court appointed nine commissaries to examine the seven volumes, suspending their further sale or delivery in the meanwhile.

When the commissaries sent in their report a month later, the parliament was dissatisfied with its tenour, and appointed four new examiners, two of them being theologians and two of them lawyers.

Before the new censors had time to do their work, the Council of State interposed with an arbitrary decree (March 1759) suppressing the privilege which had been conceded in 1746; prohibiting the sale of the seven volumes already printed, and the printing of any future volumes under pain of exemplary punishment.[143] The motive for this intervention has never been made plain.

One view is that the king's government resented the action of the law courts, and that the royal decree was only an episode in the quarrel then raging between the crown and the parliaments.