SOURCE: Doyle, William. “Voltaire and Venality: The Ambiguities of Abuse.” In The Secular City: Studies in the Enlightenment Presented to Haydn Mason, edited by T. D. Hemming, E. Freeman, and D. Meakin, pp. 102-11. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994.

In this essay, Doyle considers the context and influence of Voltaire's writings on veniality, or the sale of royal offices. Doyle also traces Voltaire's political alignments and his use of the veniality debate to attack Richelieu and Montesquieu.

‘Il faut en France,’ wrote La Bruyère in 1688, ‘beaucoup de fermeté et une grande étendue d'esprit pour se passer des charges et des emplois, et consentir ainsi à demeurer chez soi et à ne rien faire.’ Yet the leisure of the sage, he reflected, taken up as it was in tranquil thought, conversation, and reading, was also a form of work.¹ Writing certainly was, as the life of Voltaire bore witness. But...