Two from the body of Avocats and Procureurs;
Two from the Juges Consuls;
Two from the Notaries;
Two from the body of Merchants; and, lastly,
Two sent by each of the sixteen parishes.
These last were supposed to represent the people, properly so called, especially the industrial corporations. We see that care had been taken to keep them in a constant minority.
When the places in the town corporation fell vacant, the general assembly selected three persons to fill each vacancy.
Most of the offices belonging to the Hôtel de Ville were not exclusively given to members of corporations, as was the case in several municipal constitutions, that is to say, the electors were not obliged to choose from among them their magistrates, advocates, &c. This was highly disapproved by the members of the Présidial.
According to this Présidial, which appears to have been filled with the most violent jealousy against the corporation of the town, and which I strongly suspect objected to nothing so much in the municipal constitution as that it did not enjoy as many privileges in it as it desired, ‘the General Assembly, which is too numerous, and consists, in part, of persons of very little intelligence, ought only to be consulted in cases of sale of the communal domains, loans, establishment of octrois, and elections of municipal officers. All other business matters might be discussed in a smaller assembly, composed only of the notables. This assembly should consist only of the Lieutenant-General of the Sénéchaussée, the Procureur du Roi, and twelve other notables, chosen from amongst the six bodies of clergy, magistracy, nobility, university, trade, and bourgeois, and others not belonging to the above-named bodies. The choice of the notables should at first be confined to the General Assembly, and subsequently to the Assembly of Notables, or to the body from which each notable is to be selected.’
All these functionaries of the State, who thus entered in virtue of their office or as notables into the municipal corporations of the ancien régime, frequently resembled those of the present day as to the name of the office which they held, and sometimes even as to the nature of that office; but they differed from them completely as to the position which they held, which must be carefully borne in mind, unless we wish to arrive at false conclusions. Almost all these functionaries were notables of the town previous to being invested with public functions, or they had striven to obtain public functions in order to become notables; they had no thought of leaving their own town and no hope of any higher promotion, which alone is sufficient to distinguish them completely from anything with which we are acquainted at the present day.