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VENALITY OF JUSTICE.

would lay aside their red robes, and descend from the fleursde-lis to frequent houses of a lower order, fashionable suppers, and to take part in private theatricals.

O Justice, how low hast thou fallen!... O degrading history! In the middle ages it was material, in the land and in the race, in the fief and in the blood. The lord, or he who succeeds all others, the lord of lords, the king, would say: "Justice is mine; I can judge or cause to be judged." By whom? "No matter by whom; by any one of my lieutenants, by my servant, my steward, my porter . . . . Come here; I am pleased with you and give you a magistracy." This man says, to the same purpose: "I shall not be a judge myself, I shall sell this magistracy."-Then comes the son of a merchant, who purchases, to sell a second time, this most holy of sacred things; thus justice passes from hand to hand, like a parcel of goods, nay, passes into a heritage, a dowry. . . A strange jointure for a young bride, the right of hanging and breaking a man on the wheel!

Hereditary right, venality, privilege, exception,-such were the names of justice. And yet how otherwise should we term injustice?-Privileges of persons, judged by whom they chose. Privilege of time: I judge thee, at my good pleasure, to-morrow, in ten years, or never. And privilege of place. The parliament will summon from the distance of a hundred and fifty leagues or more some poor fellow who is pleading against his lord. I advise him to be resigned and give up his cause; let him abandon it altogether rather than come and waste years perhaps at Paris, in dirt and poverty, in soliciting a decree from the good friends of his lord.

The parliaments of latter years had provided, by decrees, not promulgated, but avowed and faithfully executed, that none but men of noble birth or newly-made nobles could any longer be admitted among them.

Thence arose a deplorable decline of capacity. The study of the law, debased in the schools,* weakened among the lawyers,

*The venerable M. Berriat Saint-Prix has often related to me some singular facts relating to this matter. Ignorance and routine were becoming. the character of the tribunals more and more every day. On their systematic opposition to d'Aguesseau's attempts to restore unity to the law, see M. La Ferrière's fine Histoire du Droit Français.

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was altogether wanting among the magistrates,-those very men who applied the law for life or death. The companies very seldom required the candidate to give proofs of his science, if he proved his titles of nobility.

Thence also proceeded a line of conduct more and more false and ambiguous. Those noble magistrates are constantly advancing and retreating. They shout for liberty; Turgot becomes minister, and then they reject him. They raise a cry of States-General! But on the day they are given to them, they propose to render them null by fashioning them in the likeness of the old powerless States.

On that day they expired.

*

When the Assembly decreed an indefinite vacation, they had little expected such a blow. Those of Paris wanted to resist ; but the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Keeper of the Seals, entreated them not to do so. November would have renewed the great October movement. They registered and made the somewhat dilatory offer to give judgment gratuitously.

Those of Rouen also enregistered; but they wrote secretly and prudently to the king, that they did so provisionally, and from motives of obedience to him. Those of Metz said as much, publicly and boldly, in a general meeting of all the chambers, grounding resolutely this act on the non-liberty of the king. Those men were able to swagger, being protected by Bouille's artillery.

The timid Bishop, the Keeper of the Seals, was sore afraid. He pointed out the danger to the king: how the Assembly would retaliate, in anger, and let loose the people. The way to save the parliaments, was for the king to hasten to condemn them himself. He would be in a better position to interfere and intercede. Indeed, the cities of Rouen and Metz were already impeaching their parliaments and demanding their punishment. Those proud bodies saw themselves alone, with the whole population against them: they retracted. Metz itself interceded for its guilty parliament; and the Assembly pardoned it (November 25th, 1789).

* See Sallier, the Parliamentarian, Annales, ii., p. 49.

CHAPTER IV.

RESISTANCE.-PARLIAMENTS.-MOVEMENT OF THE

CONFEDERATIONS.

Labours of the Judiciary Organisation.-The Parliament of Brittany at the Bar of the Assembly, January 8, 1790.-The Parliaments of Brittany and Bordeaux condemned, January, March.-Origin of the Confederations: Anjou, Brittany, Dauphiné, Franche-Comté, Rhone, Burgundy, Languedoc, Provence, &c.-War against the Châteaux repressed; the Cities defend the Nobles, their Enemies, February, 1790.

THE most obstinate resistance was that of the parliament of Brittany. Three several times it refused to register, and thought itself able to maintain its refusal. On one hand, it had the nobility, who were mustering at Saint-Malo, the numerous and very faithful servants of the nobles, its own members and clients in the towns, its friends in the religious establishments (confréries), and the corporations of trades; add, moreover, the facility of obtaining recruits in that multitude of workmen out of employ, and people wandering about the streets, dying of hunger. The towns beheld them busily engaged in preparing a civil war. Surrounded as they were by hostile or doubtful rural districts, they might be reduced to famine; they therefore resolved to settle the question at once. Rennes and Nantes, Vannes and Saint Malo, sent overwhelming accusations to the Assembly, declaring that they abjured all connection with the traitors. Without waiting for orders, the national guard of Rennes entered the castle and secured the cannon (December 18, 1789).

The Assembly took two measures. It summoned the parliament of Brittany to its bar; and it gave a favourable reception to the petition of Rennes soliciting the creation of other tribunals. It began its grand work, the organisation of a system of justice worthy of the name, neither paid, purchased, nor hereditary, but sprung from the people and for the people. The first article of such an organisation was, of course, the suppression of the parliaments (December 22, 1789).

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Thouret, the author of the report, well laid down this maxim, sadly overlooked since then, that a revolution that wishes to be durable ought, before everything else, to deprive its enemies of the sword of justice.

It is a strange contradiction to say to the system overthrown: "Thy principle is adverse to me; I blot it out of the laws and government; but in all private matters, thou shalt apply it against me. How was it possible thus to disown the quiet, calm, but terrible omnipotence of the judicial power, which must inevitably absorb it. Every other power is in need of it; but it can do without the others. Give me but the judicial power, and keep your laws and ordinances, all that mountainheap of paper; and I will undertake sto establish triumphantly the system the most opposite to your laws. Those old parliamentary tyrants were obliged, in spite of themselves, to come and bow down to the National Assembly (January 8th). If they had not come by fair means, Brittany would even have raised an army on purpose to drag them thither. They appeared with an arrogant air and an ill-disguised contempt for that Assembly of lawyers, for whom they cared almost as little as they did in days of yore, when, with a lofty demeanour, they overwhelmed the bar with their severe lectures. But now the tables were turned. Besides, what did it matter who were the persons? It was to reason that they were to reply, in presence of principles now laid down for the first time.

Their haughtiness entirely disappeared, and they remained, as it were, nailed to the ground, when, from that Assembly of advocates, they listened to the following words: "You say Brittany is not represented; and yet she has, in this Assembly, sixty-six representatives. It is not in antiquated charters, in which cunning, combined with power, found means to oppress the people, that you must look for the rights of the nation; it is in Reason; its rights are as ancient as time, and as sacred as nature."

The president of the parliament of Brittany had not defended the parliament which formed the matter of debate. He defended Brittany, which neither wished nor needed to be defended.

He alleged the clauses of the marriage of Anne of Brittany, a marriage that was no better than a divorce organised and stipulated for by Brittany and France. He pleaded for this

306 THE PRINCIPALITIES ARRAYED AGAINST THE PARLIAMENTS.

divorce, as a right that was to be eternal. A hateful insidious defence, addressed not to the Assembly, but to provincial pride, -a provocation exciting civil war.

Had Brittany to fear she would become less by becoming France? Was it possible that such a separation should last for ever? Was it not necessary that a more real alliance should be sooner or later effected? Brittany has gained enough in sharing the glory of so great an empire; and certainly this empire has also gained, we must frankly confess, in espousing that poor yet glorious country, its bride of granite, that mother of noble hearts and vigorous resistance.

Thus the defence of the parliaments, being untenable, subsided into a defence of provinces and provincial states. But these states found themselves still weaker in one respect. The parliaments were homogeneous organised bodies; but the states were nothing better than monstrous and barbarous constructions, heterogeneous and discordant. The best to be said in their favour was that a few of them, those of Languedoc, for instance, had administered injustice wisely and prudently. Others, those of Dauphiné, under the able direction of Mounier, had made a noble beginning on the eve of the Revolution.

This same Mounier, a fugitive, and belonging to the reactionparty, had abused his influence over Dauphiné to fix an early convocation of the states, "in which they would examine whether the king were really free." At Toulouse one or two

hundred nobles and parliamentarians had made a show of assembling the states. Those of Cambresis, an imperceptible assembly in an imperceptible country, which termed themselves states, had also claimed their privilege of not being France, and said, like those of Brittany, "We are a nation."

The false and faithless representatives of these provinces came boldly and spoke in their name; but they were violently contradicted at the very same moment. The municipalities, roused into life, and full of vigour and energy, came one after the other before the National Assembly to say to those States and Parliaments: "Speak not in the name of the people; the people do not know you; you represent only yourselves,— venality, hereditary right, and Gothic privilege.

The municipality, a real living body (this we perceive from the violence of its blows), used towards those old artificial bodies,