Again, this council itself is only half competent and at best consultative: "You yourselves do not know what government is.[6243] You have no idea of it.

I am the only one, owing to my position, that can know what a government is." On this sphere, and everywhere on its undefined perimeter, afar, as far away as his piercing eye can penetrate, no independent way of thinking must be conceived or, especially, published.
In particular, the foremost and guiding science of the analysis of the human understanding, pursued according to the methods and after the examples furnished by Locke, Hume, Condillac and Destutt de Tracy, ideology is forbidden.
"It is owing to ideology," he says,[6244] "to that metaphysical obscurity which, employing its subtleties in trying to get at first causes, seeks to base the legislation of a people on that foundation, instead of appropriating laws to a knowledge of the human heart and the lessons of history, that all the misfortunes of our beautiful France must be attributed." In 1806, M.de Tracy, unable to print his "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des Lois" in France, sends it to the president of the United States, Jefferson, who translates it into English, publishes it anonymously, and has it taught in his schools.[6245] About the same date, the republication of the "Traite d'economie-politique" of J .-- B.

Say is prohibited, the first edition of which, published in 1804, was soon exhausted.[6246] In 1808, all publications of local and general statistics, formerly incited and directed by Chaptal, were interrupted and stopped; Napoleon always demands figures, but he keeps them for himself; if divulged they would prove inconvenient, and henceforth they become State secrets.

The same precautions and the same rigor are extended to books on law, even technical, and against a "Precis historique du droit Romain." "This work," says the censorship, "might give rise to a comparison between the progress of authority under Augustus and that going on under the reign of Napoleon, in such a way as to produce a bad effect on public opinion."[6247] In effect, nothing is more dangerous than history, for it is composed, not of general propositions that are unintelligible except to the meditative, but of particular facts accessible and interesting to the first one that comes along.
For this reason, not only the science of sensations and of ideas, philosophic law and comparative law, politics and moral law, the science of wealth and statistics, but again, and especially, the history of France, is a State affair, an object of government; for no object affects the government more nearly; no study contributes so much towards strengthening or weakening the ideas and impressions which shape public opinion for or against him.[6248] It is not sufficient to superintend this history, to suppress it if need be, to prevent it from being a poor one; it must again be ordered, inspired and manufactured, that it may be a good one.
"There is no work more important.[6249]...

I do not count the expense in this regard.