Inaugural Address. x1 
took possession of the Throne, were completely successful. 
They made hereditary, in their families, the lands, titles and 
oflices, which, before, they had enjoyed for life only. They 
usurped the sovereignty of the soil, with civil and military 
authority over the inhabitants. ‘They granted lands to their 
immediate tenants, who granted them over to others by sub- 
infeudation, and, although they professed to hold their Fiefs 
from the Crown, they were, in fact, independent. Strong 
in power, they exercised, in their several territories, every 
Royal prerogative.—They coined money—fixed the standard 
of weights and measures—granted safeguards—entertained a 
military force—imposed taxes—and administered justice in 
their own names, and in Courts of their own creation, which 
decided ultimately in all cases, civil and criminal, not ac- 
cording to the writteu Laws of the Kingdom, but according 
to the unwritten customs and usages of the District over 
which they respectively claimed and exercised Jurisdiction.(1) 
By these usurpations of the Seigneurs, the foundations of 
the ancient laws of France were gradually undermined. But 
the demolition of this venerable fabrick was greatly promoted 
by the profound ignorance which pervaded the Kingdom dur- 
ing this period. Few persons, except ecclesiastics, could 
read, and, hence, the Theodosian Code—the Laws of the 
Barbarians, which had been reduced to writing, and the Ca- 
pitulars sunk imperceptibly, but equally, into oblivion, The 
clergy also furthered its destruction by adopting, in their jue 
risdictions, the Canon Law which they had begun to compile 
early in the ninth century, and the Crown completed it by 
the publication of the ever-memorable Edict of Pistes, so 
called from the City of Pistes, where it was promulgated in 
the year 864, by Charles the Bald, one of the weakest of the 
week descendants of Charlemagne. By this Edict, in the 
mistaken policy of conciliation, the unwritten usages of each 
tt Seigneurie 
(1) Fleury, 51 §- 52—Hargraves’ Notes on Coke’s Littleton, p 366, a. 
