FRANCE. (BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.) 



279 



which was an intendant. The great power intrusted 

 to single officers, the total absence of all control 

 over them, the difficulty of obtaining justice against 

 them from the ministers, connected with the inexpe- 

 rience of many of their number, and the frequent 

 changes made in them, gave rise to numberless gross 

 abuses, oppressions, and arbitrary acts, which made 

 the intendants very obnoxious. It was, therefore, 

 one of the most useful measures of Necker, during 

 his first administration of the finances (from 1775 to 

 1781), to restore the administration of the provinces, 

 in a measure, to colleges of the estates. He pro- 

 posed, in 1778, to establish in each province assem- 

 blees provinciates, composed of the three estates, the 

 king appointing sixteen persons in each province 

 (three clergymen, five noblemen, and eight of the 

 third estate), by whom the other members, from thir- 

 ty-two to thirty-six, should be chosen. This plan 

 was generally approved by the nation (the duke of 

 Burgundy, heir apparent in the reign of Louis XIV., 

 and the dauphin, father of Louis XVI., had enter- 

 tained similar views), but was prevented from being 

 executed by the opposition of the parliaments and 

 higher nobility. These reforms were accomplished 

 only in Upper Guienne and Berry, where they pro- 

 duced good effects, as Necker proves in his De V Ad- 

 ministration des Finances, II., ch. 5. The further, 

 execution of this plan, which would have made the 

 administration of the provinces similar to the Brit- 

 ish quarter-sessions of the justices of the peace, and 

 the grand jury of the assizes, was interrupted by the 

 dismission of Necker, in 1781. On Necker's recall 

 to the ministry (in 1788), this plan was again brought 

 forward, and was fully executed, during the revolu- 

 tion, by the creation of conseils generaux (depart- 

 mental councils), whose operation, however, was 

 again changed through the establishment of prefects 

 by Bonaparte. These departmental councils, with 

 a conseil d'arrondissement in each sub-prefecture, 

 still exist for the distribution of the taxes on real 

 estate, and the regulation of the common expenses 

 of the departments and arrondissements. Their mem- 

 bers were, however, appointed by the govern- 

 ment until the late changes, of which we shall 

 speak hereafter, and much still remains to be done 

 for the improvement of the administration of the 

 communes. The introduction of the requisite im- 

 provements was one of the measures to which the 

 duke of Orleans was made to engage himself before 

 he took the oath as king of the French. The states- 

 general of the realm (etats-generaux) were first con- 

 voked by Philip IV., the Fair (1285 1314), in three 

 branches ; and his reign may be considered as the 

 period when the ancient feudal anarchy gave place 

 to an organized government. From this time, the 

 peerage was but an empty dignity; none of its old 

 privileges remained to it except a seat in the highest 

 court of justice, which Philip made permanent at 

 Paris, and to which he appointed justices learned in 

 the law. But in the new states-general, the peers 

 named by Philip, in the place of the ancient princes 

 of the realm had no separate place. There were no 

 hereditary nor official members of this body, but all 

 were elected. The clergy, nobility, and third estate, 

 assembled in the chief bailiwics, whenever the states 

 were convoked ; and chose, each estate by itself, an 

 optional or prescribed number of deputies, which 

 was, therefore, never the same. Thirty-three ses- 

 sions of the states-general were held from 1302 to 

 1614 : the last consisted of 104 deputies of the clergy, 

 132 of the nobility, and 192 of the third estate. It 

 separated without having accomplished anything, 

 because the three chambers could not agree. The 

 parliaments first revived these assemblies in the 

 ivign of Louis XVI., by declaring (for the purpose 



of giving weight to their opposition to the reforms of 

 of the ministers) that the consent of the states-general 

 was necessary to the laws regulating the finances. 

 At an earlier period, the parliaments Iiad declared 

 themselves the successors of the ancient council of 

 peers of the realm, and general estates on a smaller 

 scale. Once (in 1568) they were even summoned, 

 as a distinct estate, to an assembly of the notables. 

 On this ground they demanded that laws passed by 

 the king, even with the consent of the states, should 

 not become valid, unless made public by being entered 

 on their journal. To support this pretension sue 

 cessfully, they ought to have secured the confidence 

 of the nation, by acting for the general welfare, 

 instead of displaying, as they too often did, a selfish 

 regard for their own corporate interests. For want 

 of this, their opposition to government had no firm 

 foundation. Louis XIV. was sensible of this, when, 

 at the age of seventeen years, he appeared in parlia- 

 ment in his riding dress, with his whip in his hand, 

 and ordered his ordinances to be registered. Govern- 

 ment was not able, however, to abolish the parlia- 

 ments altogether, as was twice attempted ; under 

 Louis XV., by the chancellor Maupeou, in 1771, and 

 under Louis XVI., by the minister Brienne (arch- 

 bishop of Sens), in 1788. But the power of resist- 

 ance did not lie so much in the general spirit of the 

 constitution as in the intimate connexion of the par- 

 liaments with the aristocracy on the one hand, and 

 with the lawyers on the other. The government 

 could not prevail upon the lawyers to appear at the 

 sessions of Maupeon's parliament, nor in the cour ple- 

 niere established by Brienue, and was thus under the 

 necessity of yielding. When, therefore, the parlia- 

 ment, in contradiction to its former pretensions, 

 declared itself incompetent to register new taxes, 

 and demanded the states-general, it expected to find, 

 in the two first estates, such an opposition to the 

 ministers as to baffle all their exertions to reform the 

 abuses of the aristocracy, and abolish hereditary 

 offices, the exemption of the nobility from taxes, &c. 

 This very resistance of the parliaments obliged the 

 government, from different motives, to convoke the 

 states-general, as the only means of obtaining tlio 

 support of the third estate against the aristocracy, 

 as Philip IV. had formerly obtained their support 

 against the great vassals. On this account, govern- 

 ment was obliged to strengthen the third estate, by 

 giving it a double number of deputies, and by uniting 

 the three estates in one chamber (which was only a 

 restoration of the old custom. Paillet's Droit public 

 Francois, p. 98). This was due to it as the real 

 representative of the nation, and necessary to enable 

 it to be of any assistance to government. But the 

 king had not the courage or wisdom to be a king of 

 the nation ; he suffered himself to be so far misled 

 by his courtiers as to be the first opponent of his 

 ministers, and thus the design failed. 



B. What we have already said sufficiently points 

 out the great defect of the justiciary, viz., that it was 

 not distinct, but interfered with the legislative and 

 executive departments. There were also other cir- 

 cumstances, which rendered the relations between 

 the government and the courts of justice very com- 

 plicated. Precisely in those points in which judicial 

 tribunals ought to be under the control and direction 

 of the executive, they were almost entirely indepen- 

 dent ; whilst, on the other hand, the administration 

 of justice was grossly obstructed by the ministers 

 and the court. This was a consequence of the whole 

 judicial organization, which was still confusedly 

 mixed up with the ruins of the feudal system, in its 

 most important points. We will not enlarge upon 

 the point, that the administration of justice in France 

 was, as yet, a privilege attached to the property of 



