degree of control over the actions of the monarch. And this relique of their antient independency, by which alone the facred fire of liberty could be difcerned to exist in France, the parliament appeared with reason to guard with the most vigilant jealousy. An edict having been issued in the royal name, by which new and extraordinary powers were transferred to the great council, incompatible with the established rights of the parliaments of the kingdom, remonftrances were presented to the king from most of those bodies; and in that offered by the parliament of Paris (May 19, 1768) is the following remarkable passage: -"Your parliament, fire, is not afraid on this head to remind your majesty of the ever memorable words which the first president Harley addressed to Henry III. in 1586. "Sire," said the magistrate, "we have two forts of laws: -one fort are the ordonnances of our kings, and these may be altered according to the differences of times and circumstances; the other fort are the ordonnances of the kingdom, which are inviolable, and by which you afcend to the throne and to the crown, which your predeceffors preserved. Among these public laws, that is of the most sacred kind, and has been most religiously kept by your predeceffors, which orders that no law or ordonnance shall be published but what is verified in this assembly-They thought a violation of this law was a violation of that by which they were made kings."

It was afterwards proposed, at an extraordinary session, to state to the king that the existence of the grand council itself was a grievance. This, however, was negatived, the duc de Choiseul and the princes of the blood attending in person to oppose the motion, by a majority of two voices; and the parliament contented itself with presenting another memorial to the king, shewing the necessity of afcertaining the limits of its jurisdiction, and securing the parliament against its encroachments by a clear and positive law. But the parliament of Toulouse, less moderate, issued an arrêt

VOL. I.

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arrêt by which all persons were forbidden, under fevere penalties, to conform to, or execute any judgmenr of the grand council within the province of Languedoc.

Scarcely had the ferments excited by this obnoxious procedure of the court in any degree subsided, when a new and far more ferious conteft arose in consequence of the memorable profecution commenced in the parliament of Paris against the duc d'Aiguillon, governor of the province of Bretagne, for high crimes and misdemeanors in the administration of his government. While the nation was waiting in anxious fuspense the result of this trial, which had already difclosed a scene of cruelty and injustice scarcely to be paralleled, the king thought proper to hold a bed of justice, in which he commanded an edict to be enregistered fuppreffing the charges brought against this nobleman, and prohibiting any farther proceedings against him. The parliament of Paris, on re-affembling, issued an arrêt, by which the duke was forbidden to take his feat in parliament, or to exercise any of the functions of the peerage, till a legal acquittal had taken place. This arrêt was annulled by a decree of the king in council, declaring it to be an infringement of the royal authority.

The parliament notwithstanding, by a folemn act, confirmed their former resolution; and strong representations were made to the king by the different chambers, particularly by that of the peers and princes of the blood, against his proceedings, as fubversive of all law, justice, and equity. The provincial parliaments also passed arrêts in appropation and confirmation of that of Paris, and the duchy of Aiguillon was fequestered till the trial of the duke should be legally terminated. At length the king in person, attended by his guards, entered without any previous notice the parliament houfe, and, after reproaching the members in the fevereft terms, ordered all the judicial acts against the duc d'Aiguillon to be erased from their registers; and, in menacing language, prohibited all revival of the proceedings

ceedings against him. The parliament nevertheless, unintimidated, issued at their next meeting another arrêt, in which they declare, that the many acts of arbitrary power exercised both against the spirit and letter of the constitution of the French monarchy, and the folemn oath of the king, leave no room to doubt of a premeditated defign to change the form of government. The dispute continued with increasing violence to the following year. The king having caused by force an edict to be enregistered, by which the indispensable obligation of the fovereign courts of justice to enregister the royal edicts, even in opposition to their own sentiments and remonstrances, was explicitly declared, the parliament entered a folemn protest againft the fame, as contrary to the laws they had sworn to defend, and refolved upon a total fufpenfion of the functions of the

courts.

The mandate of the king to revoke this decree being peremptorily rejected, the members of the parliament were, in the night of the 19th of January 1771, severally arrested by virtue of lettres de cachet, and a new tribunal was erected in the room of the exiled parliament, compofed of men entirely devoted to the court. Scarcely had they entered into office when they were formerly pronounced, by an arrêt of the parliament of Rouen, to be intruders, ufurpers, and enemies to the state. The court, irritated and enraged, had determined on the most violent meafures; but the duc de Harcourt, governor of Normandy, refused to take the command of the troops appointed for this service. The other provincial parliaments adopting a fimilar line of conduct, were in the course of the year fuppreffed and banished; and new parliaments, wholly dependent on the court, substituted in their room at Befançon, Bourdeaux, Aix, Toulouse, and Rennes. To shew the utter contempt of the court for the public opinion, the duc de Choiseul, who had indicated a disposition in fome degree favorable to the rising spirit of liberty, was dismissed

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dismissed with unusual marks of resentment and disgrace, and the duc d'Aiguillon fucceeded him in the office of firft minister.

The agitation of the nation at these proceedings cannot be expressed. The monarch became the object of univerfal reproach and execration, and not the monarch merely, but the monarchy itself. That form of government to which the French nation had been for ages so zealoufly attached, funk most sensibly in the public estimation. The tide of opinion began to flow in an opposite direction, and a republican party was visibly forming, which however small in its beginnings, might well be regarded, under that corrupt and depraved government, as truly dangerous and formidable. Scarcely were the appearances of decorum preferved on the death of the king; and the appellation of Louis le defiré, unanimously given to his successor, was the bitterest fatire on his memory.

The young monarch, defirous of recommending himself to the favor of his subjects, began his reign with the difmiffion of the duc d'Aiguillon, and his detestable co-adjutors, the chancellor Maupeou, and the comptroller general L'Abbé Terrai, which was regarded as the certain prelude of the restoration of the antient parliaments; and on the 12th November 1774, the recall of the parliament of Paris took place amid the unbounded acclamations of the people. The language of the monarch on this memorable occafion was nevertheless very high and haughty. In his speech on holding the bed of justice, he declared to the parliament, " that he was determined to preserve his authority in all its plenitude, and that he expected they would give to his subjects an example of fubmiffion." He told them, " that the king his grandfather was compelled, by their refistance to his repeated commands, to adopt fuch measures as his wisdom suggested; and that as he had thought proper to recall them to the exercise of those functions, which they ought never to have quitted, he defired them

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them to learn to prize his favors, and never to lose the remembrance of their extent." A royal ordonnance was then read, containing the various limitations by which the monarch thought proper to restrain the authority of this assembly-one very important article of which peremptorily required the parliament to enregister the royal edicts in a month at farthest after the day of their publication, unless the king should graciously permit the repetition of their remonftrances; and his majesty concluded with a promise of "his royal protection and countenance so long as they exactly conformed to what he had prescribed, and they did not attempt to enlarge the bounds of the power which was granted to them."

It very foon appeared, after the acceffion of the new monarch, though himself of a disposition pacific and unambitious, and extremely limited in his capacity, how little dependence was to be placed on the amity and good faith of France. A powerful party immediately arose at the court, of which the QUEEN, a woman of high spirit, busy, bold, and blind to confequences, was confidered as the head. Diffolute in her manners, unprincipled in her morals, faithless in her promises, this princess wanted only the talents of her predecessor Catherine of Medicis, to be as illustriously diftinguished for guilt-BUT HER MISFORTUNES HAVE ATONED. This faction burned with a defire to avenge the disgraces of the last war; and America received every encouragement to perfist in her resistance to the oppreffion of England, that was consistent with even the appearance of a decent regard to the occasional remonstrances and memorials of the court of London. The queen Talso was believed to be actuated by an ardent defire of advancing the interests of the house of Austria, by involving France in contentions which would effectually prevent any interpofition of that power in oppofition to the schemes of aggrandizement projected by her brother the emperor. In the mean time the views of M. de Maurepas, the new mi nifter,