This only increased the public curiosity, quickened the demand, led to clandestine reprints, and extended the circulation of the book that was nominally suppressed.

When the condemnation of a book was cried through the streets, the compositors said, "Good, another edition!" There was no favour that an unknown author could have asked from the magistrates so valuable to him as a little decree condemning his work to be torn up and burnt at the foot of the great staircase of the Palace of Justice.[241] It was this practical impossibility of suppression that interested both the guild of publishers and the government in the conditions of the book trade.

The former were always harassed, often kept poor, and sometimes ruined, by systematic piracy and the invasion of their rights.

The government, on the other hand, could not help seeing that, as the books could not possibly be kept out of the realm, it was to be regretted that their production conferred no benefit on the manufacturing industry of the realm, the composition, the printing, the casting of type, the fabrication of paper, the preparation of leather and vellum, the making of machines and tools.

When Bayle's Dictionary appeared, it was the rage of Europe.