T. Berns, "Le regard du censeur et la naissance de la statistique à la fin de la Renaissance", in : Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXIV/2, Genève, 2002, p.317-326
In the rather banal arguments of the 16th and 17th centuries in favour of a return to the ancient institution of censorship(Bodin, Lipsius, Althusius, Montchrétien), we clearly see that the idea of statistics and political economy would have been unable to impose itself if it had not responded to the questions of corruption and morality. Populations, numbers, corruption, virtues, and even wealth, asserted themselves in opposition to the law (the censor dealing with that which escapes from or corrupts the law), at the same time that philosophy decided to concentrate on nothing else but the question of the law.
