An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

Next to the king's council the most important governmental bodies were the higher courts of law, the parlements. These resembled the English Parliament in almost nothing but name. The French parlements—of which the most important one was at Paris and a dozen more were scattered about the provinces—did not, however, confine themselves strictly to the business of trying lawsuits. They claimed, and quite properly, that when the king decided to make a new law he must send it to them to be registered, else they would have no means of knowing just what the law was of which they were to be the guardians. Now, although they acknowledged that the right to make the laws belonged to the monarch, they nevertheless often sent a "protest" to the king instead of registering a law of which they disapproved. They would urge that the ministers had abused His Majesty's confidence. They would see, too, that their protest was printed and sold on the streets at a penny or two a copy, so that people should get the idea that the parlement was defending the nation against the oppressive measures of the king's ministers.

When the king received one of these protests two alternatives were open to him. He might recall the distasteful decree altogether or modify it so as to suit the court; or he could summon the parlement before him and in a solemn session (called a lit de justice) command it with his own mouth to register the law in its books. The parlement would then reluctantly obey, but as the Revolution approached it began to claim that a decree registered against its will was not valid.

The parlements help to prepare the way for the Revolution.

Struggles between the parlements and the ministers were very frequent in the eighteenth century. They prepared the way for the Revolution, first, by bringing important questions to the attention of the people; for there were no newspapers and no parliamentary or congressional debates to enable the public to understand the policy of the government. Secondly, the parlements not only frankly criticised the proposed measures of the king and his ministers, but they familiarized the nation with the idea that the king was not really at liberty to alter what they called "the fundamental laws" of the state. By this they meant that there was an unwritten constitution, of which they were the guardians and which limited the king's power. In this way they promoted the growing discontent with a government which was carried on in secret, and which left the nation at the mercy of the men in whom the king might for the moment repose confidence.

Public opinion.

It is a great mistake to suppose that public opinion did not exercise a powerful check upon the king, even under the autocratic old régime. It was, as one of Louis XVI's ministers declared, "an invisible power which, without treasury, guards, or an army, ruled Paris and the court,—yes, the very palace of the king." The latter half of the eighteenth century was a period of outspoken and acrid criticism of the whole existing social and governmental system. Reformers, among whom many of the king's ministers were counted, loudly and eloquently discussed the numerous abuses and the vicious character of the government, which gradually came to seem just as bad to the people of that day as it would to us now.

Discussion of public questions.

Although there were no daily newspapers to discuss public questions, large numbers of pamphlets were written and circulated by individuals whenever there was an important crisis, and they answered much the same purpose as the editorials in a modern newspaper. These pamphlets and the books of the time sometimes treated the government, the clergy, or the Catholic religion, with such open contempt, that the king, the clergy, or the courts felt it necessary to prevent their circulation. The parlement of Paris now and then ordered some offensive writing to be burned by the common hangman. Several distinguished writers were even imprisoned for expressing themselves too freely, and some booksellers and printers banished. But the attempted suppression of free discussion seemed an outrage to the more thoughtful among the public, and rather promoted than prevented the consideration of the weaknesses of the church and of the king's government.