Censure

“ The blade of the law playing up and down in its groove with iron precision, is hardly so good an instrument for regulating behavior as the flexible lash of public censure, which can delicately graduate the penalty of the offense. ”

“ Et c'est dans ce moment que vous songeriez à vous donner tort en rétablissant la censure! Vous relèveriez à l'instant même l'esprit d'opposition qui est au fond du caractère national!
Ce qui s'est passé pour la politique s'est passé aussi pour la morale. En réalité, il s'est joué, depuis dix-huit mois, moins de pièces décolletées qu'il ne s'en jouait d'ordinaire sous l'empire de la censure. Le public sait que le théâtre est libre; il est plus difficile. Voilà la situation d'esprit où est le public. Pourquoi donc vouloir faire mal ce que la foule fait bien? ”

“ Celui de nous qui serait élu ainsi ne verrait pas de honte à exercer les fonctions de censeur; il s'en ferait même honneur, car il sentirait qu'elles lui ont été confiées, non pour opprimer, mais pour protéger et défendre les auteurs dramatiques.
M. VICTOR HUGO.—Personne n'accepterait. Les auteurs dramatiques consentiront à exercer la censure répressive, parce que c'est une magistrature; ils refuseront d'exercer la censure préventive, parce que c'est une police. ”

“ On n'indique guère qu'un moyen: faire exercer la censure par des personnages considérables, des membres de l'Institut, de l'Assemblée nationale, et autres, qui fonctionneront au nom du gouvernement, avec une certaine indépendance, dit-on, une certaine autorité, et, à coup sûr, une grande honorabilité. Il n'y a à cela qu'une petite objection, c'est que c'est impossible....
Croyez-moi, n'accouplez jamais ce mot, qui est si noble, l'Institut de France, avec ce mot qui l'est si peu, la censure!
Dans votre comité de censure, mettez-vous des membres de l'Assemblée nationale élus par cette assemblée? ”

“ They who escape from justice will not suffer a question upon reputation. They will take the crown of the causeway: they will be revered as martyrs; they will triumph as conquerors. Nobody will dare to censure that popular part of the tribunal, whose only restraint on misjudgment is the censure of the public. ”

“ I WOULD that full justice to the greatness, wisdom, and magnanimity of my much calumniated hero could be accomplished without the painful task of censuring and exposing the conduct of those enemies to whose machinations he owed penury, neglect, and persecution in his lifetime—obloquy and misrepresentation after death. To censure at any time is a disagreeable task; more especially when the object of your strictures is a personage whose memory successive generations have held in reverential esteem. ”

“ It is not clamorous blame, 'Tis righteous censure only which can wound. BURLEIGH. We know that holy justice cannot 'scape The voice of censure; and the public cry Is ever on the side of the unhappy: Envy pursues the laurelled conqueror; The sword of justice, which adorns the man, Is hateful in a woman's hand; the world Will give no credit to a woman's justice If woman be the victim. Vain that we, The judges, spoke what conscience dictated ”

“ That man who can stand in the breach of universal public censure, with all the fashions of opinion disgracing him in the thoughts of the lookers on, with the tide of obloquy beating against his breast, and the fingers of the mighty, combined many, pointing him to scorn ”

“ The law, therefore, which forbids the speaking evil of the ruler of the people, is certainly to be understood with proper exceptions, so as not to exclude any just censure of rulers, when their abuse of office, and the cause of truth and justice, may render such censure expedient and seasonable. ”

“ If when death has set his seal upon a man's actions, and when the evil which he has committed is irremediable, the voice of censure is still to be silent, when, I may ask, ought it to be heard? Had such an ill-judged forbearance been practised by historians, would the world have known that any tyrants, except those who may exist at the present epoch, or who may have existed within the reach of memory or of tradition, ever infested the earth? ”

“ Time only will shew whether the general censure, which you afterwards qualify, if not contradict, and the unmerited contempt that you have ostentatiously displayed of the National Assembly, be founded on reason, the offspring of conviction, or the spawn of envy. ”

“ With all these guides we may still become involved in error unless we move within the orbit of impartiality, divest ourselves of all prejudice and have our judgments warmed by the genial influence of heaven-born charity. With all these lights we should never pass judgment of censure upon any person unless the good of community requires it or a court of justice demands it. ”

“ The interest of the people is that there should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on every public act or measure. The interest of a ruling class, whether in an aristocracy or an aristocratic monarchy, is to assume to themselves an endless variety of unjust privileges, sometimes benefiting their pockets at the expense of the people, sometimes merely tending to exalt them above others, or, what is the same thing in different words, to degrade others below themselves. ”

“ But I have no where intentionally aimed the shaft of censure at any one, or attempted the character of a particular man; much less have I dared to attack indiscriminately a whole body of men. As far as I have engaged in painting the errors or faults of any, I have endeavoured to represent general actions of men, such as they are, and not the picture of individuals. ”

“ C'est la seule manière possible d'organiser la censure répressive. De cette manière vous conciliez les deux choses qui font tout le problème: l'intérêt de la société et l'intérêt de la liberté....
En dehors du syndicat de l'ordre des auteurs dramatiques, il y aura aussi un juge qui veillera à la police de l'audience, à la dignité de la représentation; ce juge, ce sera le public. Sa puissance est grande et sérieuse; elle sera plus sérieuse encore quand il se sentira réellement investi d'une sorte de magistrature par la liberté même. Ce juge a puissance de vie et de mort ”

“ No man has ever yet held an important or responsible post in our own or any other country and escaped censure. I should have been weak and foolish indeed, had I expected to pass through the fiery ordeal entirely unscathed, especially as I was required, if not to come in conflict with, at least to thwart evil machinations, and hold in restraint wicked passions, or rid the territory of many lawless, reckless and desperate men. ”

“ It has been hitherto imagined, my lords, that no punishment is heavier than that of infamy; and shame has, by generous minds, been avoided at the hazard of every other misery. That such a censure as is proposed by the motion, must irreparably destroy the reputation of the person against whom it is directed, that it must confirm the reports of his enemies, impair the esteem of his friends, mark him out to all Europe as unworthy of his sovereign's favour, and represent him to latest posterity as an enemy to his country, is indisputably certain. ”

“ We have endeavored by persuasion, by argument, by moral and religious appeals to urge upon the nation, and especially upon our Southern brethren, the necessity of freeing themselves from the sin, the evils, and the shame of slavery. You cannot punish or censure freedom of speech in Abolitionists, without preparing the way to censure it in any other class of citizens who may for the moment be obnoxious to the majority. A penal enactment against us is less to be dreaded than condemnatory resolutions ”

“ It may be asked why the censure in the report is so ambiguous as to admit of an application to some Brigade of mine, as well as to myself. In my public life I have learned to understand the language of those who want to hurt. It is never more insidious than when it merely suggests and insinuates. By saying little that is positive, and, expressing that little obscurely, it opens a wide field for a malevolent imagination. ”

“ If the courts are not defended, they may bend before the storm of undeserved censure. Constituted as humanity is, there is grave danger that the judges will be unconsciously intimidated and coerced by this abuse and clamor. ”

“ Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick. ”

“ Thus, the censure which he incurs will most often come from those whose views are essentially his own; and the very matter which calls it forth will be that which elicits the applause of adversaries who cannot bring themselves to believe either in the truth of his opinions, in the integrity of his motives, or in the sincerity of his aims. ”

“ But if they are well founded, they tend to open the eyes of the prince or state, who, form blind prejudice or some strange infatuation may have reposed their affairs in hands ruinously incapable. Does any man of sense, who is the least acquainted with history, imagine that the greatest generals in the world ever produced have escaped censure? ”

“ It cannot, sir, be denied, that some insinuations were uttered injurious to those whose zeal may sometimes happen to prompt them to warm declarations, or incite them to passionate emotions. Whether I am of importance enough to be included in the censure, I despise it too much to inquire or consider, but cannot forbear to observe, that zeal for the right can never become reproachful, and that no man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it. ”

“ To say the truth, the government is here injudiciously attacked in its most defensible part. If it be necessary, as some seem to think, to find fault with their superiors, our administration is more liable to the very opposite censure. ”

“ If there was the same propensity in mankind for investigating the motives, as there is for censuring the conduct, of public characters, it would be found that the censure so freely bestowed is oftentimes unmerited and uncharitable. ”

“ In short they censure an infinity of things, among which many indeed merit censure, for it cannot be denied that there are many bad and wicked men among us, or that this age of ours is much fuller of vice than that which they praise. ”

“ In the critical examination we have given this painful and horrible affair, we do not find of the immediate participants any officer living deserving of censure; and, even if evidence justifies it, it would ill become us to speak evil of or censure those dead who sacrificed life struggling to maintain the authority and power of the government and add new lustre to our arms and fame. ”

“ It happens in this, as in too many other instances, that the little sinners become the subjects of censure, while those whose crimes differ from them only in magnitude, are overlooked, or treated with complaisance. ”

“ As to the other paper, I must confess it is a sharp censure from an English house of commons against dissolving grand juries, by any judge before the end of the term, assizes, or sessions, while matters are under their consideration, and not presented; as arbitrary, illegal, destructive to publick justice, a manifest violation of his oath, and as a means to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom. ”

“ When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of the world had different customs;” ”

“ Nor are such men so much alarmed by the threats and penalties of the law as by that sentiment of shame with which nature has endowed man, which is nothing else than a certain fear of deserved censure. The wise director of a government strengthens this natural instinct by the force of public opinion, and perfects it by education and manners. And thus the citizens are preserved from vice and corruption rather by honor and shame than by fear of punishment. ”

“ Rutledge, of South Carolina, would not oppose a reference if he were sure the committee would report as strong a censure as the memorial deserved; such a censure as a set of men ought to meet who attempt to seduce the servants of gentlemen traveling to the seat of government, and who are incessantly importuning congress to interfere in a business with which, by the constitution, they have no concern. ”

“ I am indignant; yet, do you know, not at this duchess, or that countess, but at the invention of ranks, and titles, and pre-eminence. I used to hate that king and t'other prince; but, alas! on reflection I find the censure ought to fall on human nature in general. They are made of the same stuff as we, and dare we say what we should be in their situation? Poor creatures! think how they are educated, or rather corrupted, early, how flattered! To be educated properly, they should be led through hovels, and hospitals, and prisons. ”

“ He became obsessed by the thought that the apparatus of the criminal law in a free country could fasten bonds on an entirely innocent person, could successfully resist all attempts to cast them off, and when finally pinned down and exposed to public censure could easily evoke a second line of defense, which, under juridical forms, freed it of blame in the matter. ”

“ But if it were true in fact, that no Appeals had been heared between 1570 and 1725, in causes of correction and censure, yet this would not affect the right, any more than the want of Appeals from a censure of a peculiar sort would render that single kind of censure unappealable. For, a right extending to various particulars will not surely be lessened from want of opportunity or inclination to exercise it in every one of them. ”