Originally the Parliament consisted of jurists and advocates chosen by the King from the ablest members of their profession. A path to honours and to the highest offices of State was thus opened by merit to men born in the humblest conditions of fortune. The Parliament was then, with the Church, one of those powerful democratic institutions, which were born and had implanted themselves on the aristocratic soil of the Middle Ages.
At a later period the Crown, to make money, put up to sale the right of administering justice. The Parliament was then filled by a certain number of wealthy families, who considered the national judicature as a privilege of their own, to be guarded from the intrusion of others with increasing jealousy; they obeyed in this the strange impulse which seemed to impel each particular body to dwindle more and more into a small close aristocracy, at the very time when the opinions and general habits of the nation caused society to incline more and more to democracy.
Nothing certainly could be more opposed to the ideas of the time than a judicial caste, exercising by purchase the whole jurisdiction of the country. No practice, indeed, had been more often and more bitterly censured, for a century past, than the sale of these offices. This magistracy, vicious as it was in principle, had nevertheless a merit which the better constituted tribunals of our own time do not always possess. The judges were independent. They administered justice in the name of the sovereign, but not in compliance with his will. They obeyed no passions but their own.
When all the intermediate powers which might counter-balance or attenuate the unlimited power of the King had been struck down, the Parliament alone still remained firm. The Parliament could still speak when all the world was silent, and maintain itself erect, for a time, when all the world had long been forced to bow. The consequence was that it became popular as soon as the Government was out of favour with the nation. And when, for a moment, hatred of despotism had become a fervent passion and a sentiment common to all Frenchmen, the Parliaments appeared to be the sole remaining barrier against absolute power. The defects which had been most blamed in them acted as a sort of guarantee of their political honesty. Even their vices were a protection, and their love of power, their presumption, and their prejudices were arms which the nation used. But no sooner had absolute power been definitely conquered, and the nation felt assured that it could defend its own rights, than the Parliament again at once became what it was before—an old, decrepit, and discredited institution; a legacy of the Middle Ages, again exposed to the full tide of public aversion. To effect its destruction, the King had only to endure its triumph.
CHAPTER V.
ABSOLUTE POWER BEING SUBDUED, THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION FORTHWITH BECAME MANIFEST.
The bond of a common passion had for an instant linked all classes together. No sooner was that bond relaxed than they flew asunder, and the veritable spirit of the Revolution, disguised before, was suddenly unveiled. After the triumph which had been obtained over the King, the next thing was to ascertain who should win the fruits of the victory; the States-General having been conceded, who should predominate in that assembly. The King could no longer refuse to convoke them; but he had still the power to determine the form they were to assume. One hundred and seventy-five years had elapsed since their last meeting. They had become a mere indistinct tradition. None knew precisely what should be the number of the deputies, the mutual relations of the three Orders, the mode of election, the forms of deliberation. The King alone could have settled these questions: he did not settle them. After having allowed the disputed powers, which he sought to retain, to be snatched away from him, he failed to use those which were not disputed.
M. de Brienne, the First Minister, had strange notions on this subject, and caused his master to adopt a resolution unparalleled in history. He regarded the questions, whether the electoral franchise was to be universal or limited, whether the assembly was to be numerous or restricted, whether the Orders were to be separated or united, whether they were to be equal or unequal in their rights, as a matter of erudition. Consequently an Order in Council commanded all the constituted bodies of the realm to make researches as to the structure of the old States-General and the forms used by them; and added that ‘His Majesty invited all the learned persons of the kingdom, more especially those who belonged to the Academy of Belles-lettres and Antiquities, to address to the Keeper of the Seals papers and information on this subject.’
Thus was the constitution of the country treated like an academical essay, put up to competition. The call was heard. All the local powers deliberated on the answer to be given to the King. All the corporate bodies put in their claims. All classes endeavoured to rake up from the ruins of the old States-General the forms which seemed best adapted to secure their own peculiar interests. Every one had something to say; and as France was the most literary country in Europe, there was a deluge of publications. The conflict of classes was inevitable; but that conflict, which should naturally have been reserved for the States-General themselves, where it might have been kept within bounds when it arose on given questions, finding a boundless field before it, and being fed by general controversy, speedily assumed a degree of strange boldness and excessive violence, to be accounted for by the secret excitement of the public mind, but which no external symptom had as yet prepared men for. Between the time when the King renounced his absolute authority and the commencement of the elections about five months elapsed. In this interval little was changed in the actual state of things, but the movement which was driving the French nation to a total subversion of society dashed onwards with increasing velocity.