It’s frustrating how poorly served Voltaire is by the World Wide Web. I needed the citation for one of his epigrams. It was actually faster to go down to the basement, get the two books it could have come from off the shelf, and leaf through them to find it.
It turns out that the reason I couldn’t remember which book it was from is that it’s in both the Lettres Philosophiques (1734) and in the Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764), prefaced in the latter by “it’s been said before, and I can’t say it better, …”
Once I had the right book, the Gallica app from the National Library of France was able to point me to the actual text.
Modern Transcription1
S’il n’y avait en Angleterre qu’une Religion, le despotisme serait à craindre, s’il y en avait deux, elles se couperaient la gorge ; mais il y en a trente, & elles vivent en paix heureuses.
Translation
If there were only one religion in England, they should fear tyranny. If there were two, they’d slit each others’ throats. But there are thirty, and they live happily in peace.
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