They protested in season and out of season against arrangements which made the administration of justice a matter of sale and purchase.

They lifted up a strong voice against the atrocious barbarities of an antiquated penal code.

It was this band of writers, organised by a harassed man of letters, and not the nobles swarming round Lewis XV., nor the churchmen singing masses, who first grasped the great principle of modern society, the honour that is owed to productive industry.

They were vehement for the glories of peace, and passionate against the brazen glories of war.[160] We are not to suppose that the Encyclopaedia was the originating organ of either new methods or new social ideas.

The exalted and peculiarly modern views about peace, for instance, were plainly inspired from the writings of the Abbe Saint Pierre (1658-1743)--one of the most original spirits of the century, who deserves to be remembered among other good services as the inventor of the word _bienfaisance_.