Read "The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
As the law is the declaration of the general will, the censorship is the declaration of the public judgment: public opinion is the form of law which the censor administers, and, like the prince, only applies to particular cases.
The censorial tribunal, so far from being the arbiter of the people's opinion, only declares it, and, as soon as the two part company, its decisions are null and void.