ABSTRACT
Monsieur de Voltaire would have been astonished and grieved to learn that most of his readers in the twentieth century prefer Candide to La Henriade and Jeannot et Colin to Zaire. Voltaire is usually praised as a satirist, and satire is indeed a true description of these innumerable pamphlets; but it is not a vituperative or gross satire. The greater number of these pamphlets was directed against Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, and the priests. They may be called blasphemies, but Voltaire was not the man to waste his time on mere senseless insults to a religion. Voltaire wished to remove from the State the financial burden of a considerable non-productive population which controlled an immense income and paid taxes only as a “voluntary contribution that ends might have been attained without attacking Christianity. As a Deist and a Rationalist, Voltaire desired to overthrow all sects of Christianity, all revealed religion, especially the persecuting religions, Christianity and Mahommedanism.
