betrayed a want of decision which was peculiarly calculated to lessen the dignity of the Crown, and to curtail the power of the Sove

reign. They possessed the courage to enforce the most rigorous acts of authority, but they wanted the resolution to abide by their consequences. When the Parliament had refused to register the financial edicts, respecting the Land Tax and Stamp Duty, the King had recourse to a measure, sanctioned by the prescription of ages, in holding a bed of justice, and in ordering the edicts to be registered in his presence. The protest of the Parliament against this proceeding was, in fact, an invasion of the established law of the realm, and their denunciation of punishment, against all who should obey the edicts, was an assumption of the supreme power, both legislative and executive, which amounted to an act of rebellion. It was the duty of the ministers to represent it to the nation as such, and, as such, to inflict punishment on the authors of it. Instead of which, they gave a sanction to the proceeding, by a cowardly compromise, and by relinquishing the edicts themselves. Hence the public were, naturally enough, led to conclude, that the Parliament were right, and that their Sovereign was wrong; and this notion tended, very materially, to destroy that extreme respect, amounting almost to veneration,

for the royal authority, and for the person of the King, by which the people of France had, for centuries, been particularly distinguished.

The power and jurisdiction of the French Parliaments had varied, at different periods of the monarchy, and had never been defined with precision. The proper province of their members was that of judges: in all matters of law, they had both an original and an appellant jurisdiction, as well in civil as in criminal cases; and there was no appeal from their decisions but to the King in Council.-They had always, however, claimed, and generally exercised, the right of remonstrance against edicts, which they were ordered to register; and they had, sometimes, even refused to register them. In the reign of Charles the Ninth, they had acted much in the same manner in which they acted in the year 1787. They then refused to register an edict, for extending the toleration the Protestants, and denounced the punishment of Death upon all who should presume to exercise the privileges which that edict conferred. But the interposition of the royal authority crushed their opposition, and compelled the registry of the edict. Louis the Sixteenth had, on his accession, adopted a measure of great wisdom in respect of the Parliament, the object of which was to define the boundaries of their authority. When

be came to the Throne, he found them in a state of exile, to which they had been consigned by his predecessor: in compliance with the dictates of a heart ever prone to acts of benevolence and mercy, he very soon recalled them; and, shortly after, held a bed of justice, at Paris, at which he commanded an ordinance to be registered, containing, in sixty articles, rules and directions for the conduct and government of the Parliament, whose power and pretensions it confined within very narrow limits; the members were forbidden to transmit any remonstrance or arret, concerning such affairs as might be submitted to their consideration, to any other Parliaments, except in the cases specified in the ordinance: they were enjoined never to relinquish the administration of public justice, except in cases of absolute necessity, for which the first president was made responsible to the King; resignations, the result of premeditation, were declared to incur the penalty of forfeiture, and the guilt of petty treason; and, in such cases, the grand council might replace the Parliament, without any new edict for the purpose. They were still, however, allowed to enjoy the right of remonstrance, previous to the registry of any edict or letterspatent, which they might conceive to be injurious to the welfare of the people, provided they preserved, in their representations, the respect

which was due to the Throne. But the fêpêtition of such remonstrances was expressly forbidden; and the Parliament, if their remonstrances should prove ineffectual, were bound to register the edict to which they had objected, within a month, at farthest, from the first day of its publication. They were strictly prohi bited from issuing any arret which could tend to excite trouble, or, in any manner, retard the execution of the King's ordinances; and they were assured, by the King, at the conclusion of this code, that so long as they kept within the prescribed limits, and made no attempt to extend their power, they might depend upon his favour and protection.

Against this edict, which thus became as much a law as any other law of the realm, no protest was entered by the Parliament, nor did they pretend that it infringed, in any respect, on their constitutional rights. Yet, in less than thirteen years after its legal promulgation, did these magistrates, these guardians of the law, act in direct violation of its spirit, and its letter. In consequence of their refusal to register two edicts, (one for a loan of eighteen millions, and the other for taking off some few of the restrictions under which Protestants had long laboured) even in the King's presence, who had repaired to the Palais, for the purpose of having them

registered, two of their members, Monsieur Freteau, and the Abbé Sabatierre, had been arrested, under the authority of Lettres de Cachet, and sent to distant prisons; and the duke of Orleans, who was present, and took the lead in opposition to the King, was banished to oneof his country seats. This act of unseasonable severity, exercised too in a most objectionable manner, afforded the Parliament one of those opportunities, of which they were ever most anxious to avail themselves, of justifying their own conduct, and of arraigning that of their Sovereign. They accordingly drew up an address, couched in very strong terms, which they presented to the King. In this address they pronounced Lettres de Cachet to be instruments of despotism, unknown to the law, and utterly subversive of the liberty of the subject. So far they were right.-The use of these letters was certainly not sanctioned by any ordinance or edict; but, by long custom, they had, unfortunately, become a part of the Ler non Scripta, or Common-law of the land. They had been most prodigally used, and for the most tyrannical purposes, in the preceding reigns; but Louis the Sixteenth had scarcely ever had recourse to them; and when he had, it had been, chiefly, at the request of some head of a family, who had a profligate son, of debauched

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