Maurice Joly (1829-1878) was a French satirist and lawyer. Joly was born in Lons-le-Saunier to a French father and an Italian mother. He pursued law study, but stopped in 1849 in order to go to Paris where he worked at the Ministry of State for ten years. He successfully completed his legal studies and was finally admitted to the Paris bar in 1859.

The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu

He is best known as author of the pamphlet entitled The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu), which attacks the political ambitions of Napoleon III. It was first published in Brussels in 1864. The piece used the literary device of a dialogue between two diabolical plotters in Hell, the historical characters of Machiavelli and Montesquieu. In this way he tried to cover up a direct, and illegal, attack on Napoleon's rule. The pamphlets were smuggled into France for distribution, but were seized by the police immediately upon crossing the border. The police swiftly tracked down its author, and Joly was arrested. The books were banned. On April 25, 1865, he was sentenced to a prison term of fifteen months at Sainte-Pélagie.

Joly relates in his 1870 autobiography that one evening by the Seine he was inspired to write a dialogue between Montesquieu and Machiavelli. The noble baron Montesquieu would make the case for liberalism; the Florentine wizard Machiavelli would present the case for cynical despotism. In this manner, Joly would communicate the secret ways in which liberalism might spawn a despot like Napoleon III.

Subsequent research points out that Joly appears to have plagiarized a good amount of the material from a popular novel by Eugene Sue.

Joly committed suicide in 1878.

The Dialogue and The Protocols the Elders of Zion

One of the few editions to survive the confiscation of Napoleon III’s secret police found its way to Switzerland, where it was picked up by the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, and served as the basis for their fraudulent document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.