D

The judges refused, threatened to resign and cease the
performance of their functions.

For a moment-and but for a moment-the vindictive
action of the government against the parliament was
suspended. Choiseul, though shorn of influence, was
still minister, and he would have strenuously opposed
any measure of extreme violence. It thus became ne-
cessary to get rid of him.
rid of him. But Louis still clung to one
whose abilities he well knew could not be replaced from
amongst his enemies. He even wrote a letter to Choi-
seul, entreating him to live on good terms with Madame
du Barry.* Choiseul could not demean himself so far.
He who had told the late dauphin, when they disagreed
about the Jesuits, that he (the duke) might one day be
his subject but never his servant, could not stoop to a
Du Barry. Louis might still have upheld Choiseul, had
not the latter, probably to render himself more neces-
sary, proposed nothing less than a war with England.

In 1769 a serious quarrel had arisen between the
countries, on the occasion of a French ship refusing to
salute in the Downs, and having been fired into in con-
sequence. Later came the affair of the Falkland islands,
which Spain had seized, capturing a small British occu-
pying force. Spain and France-or rather Spain and
Choiseul-were one, and the latter had looked forward
and prepared for a time when the united navies of the
Bourbon powers might once more cope with England
in war.
The quarrel of England with her North Ame-
rican colonies offered an opportunity; but it was not
yet safe, and Choiseul had to appease English remon-
strance in the affair of the Falkland islands. But mi-
nisters in London changed continually, the patriots
there scorning any submission to Spain, which, in case of
war, offered itself more as a prey than as a foe. The
English were therefore peremptory, and Choiseul recom-

* Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third-end
of 1769.

XXXVI.

CHAP. XXXVI.

mended replying by war. D'Aiguillon, Maupeou, and the Du Barry deprecated this extreme. It is possible, indeed, that Choiseul, foreseeing his fall, proposed war as a good and spirited measure to go out upon. He accordingly received his letter of dismissal on Christmas eve 1770, and was exiled to his estate at Chanteloup. The most popular statesman in France was succeeded by the most contemned and unpopular personage in it, the Duke d'Aiguillon, just saved from the judgment of the parliament, saved too by Du Barry, and making common cause with Maupeou and Terrai. More outrageous defiance of public opinion was impossible. Nor was it merely the general esteem which followed Choiseul into exile; the very courtiers hied thither, and it was as much the fashion to visit Choiseul as to desert Versailles.

The overthrow of the duke was followed by that of the parliament. Never had the judicial body a juster cause of complaint and resistance, than the quashing of the proceedings against the Duke d'Aiguillon. But when they thought fit to resist an exorbitant tax, their mode of showing discontent was the same. They remonstrated, and if not listened to, suspended their sittings and interrupted the course of justice. This was really monstrous. The parliament of Brittany suspended its sittings for the space of three years, during which no trial took place; the prisons were filled to overflowing with accused persons-many of them crammed into dungeons, and devoured by vermin and disease. This was avenging, on the most unfortunate class of the people, the arbitrary conduct of the government, which in the matter of taxation did not see its way, from ignorance and impracticability as much as from prodigality and abuse. Then the parliament itself was far from being, in many points, in advance of the court. That of Toulouse had racked Calas; that of Picardy had executed a young officer of nineteen, La Barre, for overthrowing a crucifix in a drunken frolic.

The Paris parliament itself had sent Count Lally to the scaffold, for no greater crime than failure, at a time when all generals and commanders failed. The parliament was as severe as the bishops against such writers as Rousseau, and condemned in the same breath new doctrines and old abuses. The judicial body were. unequal to save either the monarchy or the nation. Nor does it appear that even Choiseul could have turned them to the public profit.

Parliaments, however, offered the only opposition to the crown, the court corruption, and financial decadence; they were in consequence dreaded by the court, which foolishly thought that it would acquire security and strength by destroying such independent bodies and institutions as opposed it. But the same causes gave the parliament popularity with the nation. The judges were severally summoned by officers of the royal guard to declare whether they would promise to resume their judicial functions or not. One hundred and twenty who refused were immediately sent to different places of exile. So loud and unanimous was public opinion in their favour, that the thirty or forty judges, who had in timidity agreed to continue their sittings, felt it prudent to retract, and they took the road to exile. The Cour des Comptes, the criminal tribunal of the Châtelet, volunteered to participate the fate of the parliament. Maupeou imagined he was strengthening the monarchy when he banished the parliament, and substituted the king's privy council for it. He did the same in the provinces, appointing six superior courts to suffice for all save the Pays d'États, with which, except Artois, he did not at first meddle. In April 1771, the king held another Bed of Justice, his last, in which he instituted a new tribunal to replace the parliament. Louis closed his address by declaring that he would never change. "You hear that," observed Madame du Barry to the Duke de Nivernois, who opposed this arbitrary measure.

CHAP.

XXXVI.

CHAP. XXXVI.

"I heard the king utter the words," replied the duke; "but, Madame, he was looking at you." The mistress was an ardent foe of parliaments, and having purchased a portrait of Charles the First, by Vandyke, she hung it up and showed it to her father, as she called the monarch, with the observation, that parliaments would serve him as they had done Charles. The princes of the blood, with the exception of the son of the Prince of Condé, absented themselves, and signed a solemn protest, for which they were forbidden the court. Thirteen peers signed their names to the protest; almost all the notables were absent.

The most remarkable protest against the arbitrary measure was drawn up by the Cour des Aides, of which Malesherbes was president. No one wished to deny, it said, that the king's authority came from God, but that did not dispense with the necessity of its being just, and respecting the law. Almost the only guarantee or relic of freedom in France, was the law requiring the registration of royal edicts by the parliament. The rights of property had hitherto been respected in France; and the inamovibility of the holders in the offices for which they had paid, was equally sacred. A Frenchman ought to be deprived of neither, except as the consequence of a criminal trial. Yet now confiscation of property, and of offices was daily perpetrated by the decree of the royal council, or rather by the instrumentality of one man. Hitherto the remonstrance of parliament supplied, though imperfectly, the absence of the estates. "Now the public has no organ. The noblesse are excluded, the princes of the blood are forbidden to approach the throne. Interrogate the nation, Sire, since there remains only the nation itself, whose voice your majesty will listen to." The reply to this was the abolition of the Cour des Aides, and the exile of Malesherbes, its president.

Soon after, a more regular tribunal was formed in

Paris of such magistrates as would accept the office. Some dozen ecclesiastics were added, no doubt to modify the too legal spirit of the lawyers. To popularise the tribunal, its members were to receive no fees. Unfortunately for the character of the parliament Maupeou, the witty Beaumarchais had soon after a process, in which he thought himself unjustly treated. And he clearly proved and published, that bribes were everything with the new judges. He had been himself obliged to give fifteen livres to the wife of the judge Goezman, in order to obtain an audience of her husband. The chancellor avenged himself by forbidding the first representation of the "Barber of Seville,' which thus was not acted until the new reign.

Delivered from the importunity of parliamentary remonstrance, the Abbé Terrai carved and cut into the resources of the tax-payers. Most of the provinces were in arrear of their taille. The peasant living on chestnuts and rye could only pay his rent and taxes out of the produce of his corn crop. When this either failed or produced a glut, the peasant, having no sale, could not pay his taille. The picture which Turgot has drawn of the Limousin, where he was intendant, fully exposes this state of things; showing the poor to be ground down to mendicity or extinction, whilst the town population defended themselves against the fisc with some success, but not with less animosity against the government. The fisc occasioned a continuous fight between the controller and the middle and lower classes: the latter merely resisting in silence. Under Terrai, it was more a razzia than a combat. He knew no law, respected no right, and feared no check. How else could he find money for the expenses of the court? He increased the tailles by two millions, augmenting by tens, sous and fractions all the other taxes. He cared little whether they were onerous or not. The necessity of diminishing the

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