Pacifying a nation

The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers.

to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632