which had extended from Arras to Lyons. II. Shortly after, CHAP. the parliaments of Rouen, Besançon, Bordeaux, Aix, Toulouse, and Brittany, which had adhered to that of Paris in this contest, were suppressed, their members exiled, and new courts of law established in their room. 104. reflections event. Thus," says Mr Burke, "the noble efforts of that faithful repository of the laws, and remembrancer of the Mr Burke's ancient rights of the kingdom, terminated in its own final on this dissolution. Its fall was not more glorious from the cause in which it was engaged, than from the circumstances that attended it; several of the other parliaments having become voluntary sacrifices at its funeral pyre. That ancient spirit, from which the Franks derive their name, though still gloriously alive in the breasts of a few, no longer exists in the bulk of the people. Long dazzled with the splendour of a magnificent and voluptuous court, with the glare of a vast military power, and with the glory of some great monarch, they cannot now, in the grave light of the shade, behold things in their natural state; nor can those who have been long used to submit without inquiry to every act of power—who have been successfully encouraged in dissipation, and taught to trifle with the most important subjects-suddenly acquire that strength and tenor of mind which is alone capable of forming great resolutions, and of undertaking arduous and dangerous tasks. Thus has this great revolution in the history and government of France taken place without the smallest commotion, or without the opposition that in other periods would have attended an infraction of the heritable jurisdiction of a petty vassal."1 These were the 1 Ann. Reg. desponding reflections of the greatest political philosopher, Burke. and most far-seeing statesman, of modern times; but a more memorable instance never was exhibited of the danger of judging of the final result of events by their immediate consequences, or applying to the slow march of human affairs the hasty conclusions of impatient 1793. observation. On that day two-and-twenty years2 from 1771, 89, by 2 On Jan. 21, II. CHAP. the one on which the parliaments were exiled, Louis XVI., the grandson of the arbitrary monarch, ascended the fatal scaffold. 105. Conquest of Corsica, which made Another event, of apparently little general importance, but interesting from the heroic spirit which it developed, and of incalculable moment in its ultimate results, took place during the declining years of Louis XV. Corsica had long been an object of ambition to the French government, from its proximity to the shores of Provence, and the command which it seemed probable it would give them in the Mediterranean; and in 1768 the Duc de Choiseul conceived a favourable opportunity had occurred for carrying his designs into execution. The Genoese had formerly exercised a sort of sovereignty over this interesting island; but the strength of its mountain fastnesses, and the independent spirit of its inhabitants, had rendered it so difficult to maintain their authority, that they were glad to transfer their rights to France for a considerable sum of money. The Corsicans, when the bargain was completed, and the French troops came to take possession, evinced the utmost indignation at being thus ceded to a foreign power without their knowledge or consent, and, under their gallant leader PAOLI, maintained a protracted and heroic defence in their mountains. But the contest was too unequal between an island in the Mediterranean and the monarchy of France. England, disquieted about her American possessions, stood aloof, though the cause of the brave mountaineers excited the warmest sympathy in the nation; Austria had no fellow-feeling for a people June 1769. resisting the cession of its government; Paoli was compelled, after incredible efforts, to embark and come to 1 Ann. Reg. England, and Corsica was subdued. But little did the Salgues, i. French government suspect the awful retribution which 65. Smyth's was to fall on them for this aggression, or the citizen whom they embraced in the nation by this extension of its territory.1 Seventeen months before this conquest was 1769, 46. 42, 43, 64, Lectures, i. 68, 70. II. completed, a boy had been born in Corsica,1 then beyond CHAP. the French dominions, but who by its annexation became a French citizen, obtained an entrance to its armies, and 1On 5th ultimately became master of every thing it contained. His name was NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. * Louis XV. did not long survive the destruction of his old and persevering antagonists, the parliaments. His constitution, long enfeebled by excess of licentious indulgence, was unable to withstand the shock of any serious disorder; and the smallpox, which he took by the infection of a girl of fourteen, who had been introduced to his embraces from the Parc-aux-Cerfs, carried him off, after a short illness, on the 10th May 1774. Such was the state to which his body had been reduced by a long course of dissolute habits, that he saw his limbs literally putrefy and drop off before he himself expired. The odour was so Feb. 1768. 106. Death of Louis XV. May 10, 1774. dreadful, that the whole wing of the palace where he lay was deserted. As his latter end approached, he was strongly awakened to a sense of the abandoned life he had led, and expressed the greatest apprehensions of punishment in the world to come. The deathbed of the dying profligate was haunted by the terrors of the awful gulf of flames which he supposed to be opening to receive him. † His conduct had long exhibited a strange mixture of superstition and sensuality; when exhausted with his revels in the Parc-aux-Cerfs, he used to pray with its youthful inmates that they might preserve their orthodox principles. None of his favourites attended his dying couch: Du Barri even had fled. The dread of infection viii. 217. had banished all the inmates of the harem ;2 but it had * Napoleon was born at Ajaccio on the 5th February 1768. He subsequently gave out that he came into the world on the 15th August 1769, his saint's day, in order to make it appear that he had been by birth a French citizen, as Corsica was annexed to France in June 1769. He was christened Napolione Buonaparte. This appears from his baptismal register still existing in the second arrondissement of Paris, on occasion of his marriage with Josephine in 1796.-See SALGUES, i. 64, 65; and Quarterly Review, xii. 239. "Le Roi ne voyait que la mort en perspective, et ne parlait que de l'abîme de feu qui allait s'ouvrir, disait-il, pour punir une vie jusqu'à la fin si luxurieuse."-SOULAVIE, i. 160. 2 Dulaure, CHAP. II. 1 Soulavie, i. 160, 162. Besenval, i. 209, 308. Dulaure, viii. 217. 107. of the no terrors for his three daughters, the princesses, who, long strangers to his court, were found at his deserted bedside at the approach of the angel of death, and remained there, braving the pestilence, till he expired. Meanwhile the courtiers disappeared in crowds to pay their court to the Dauphin: the sound of their footsteps, rushing in a body across the Eil-de-Bœuf, to announce the death of the late monarch, "was terrible," says a spectator, "and absolutely like thunder." But Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were impressed with a very different sense of the duties and difficulties which awaited them; for they fell on their knees when the news was brought, and with eyes streaming with tears, exclaimed, "Guide and protect us, O God! for we are too young to reign." "1 From this account of the old French government prior Advantages to the Revolution, it is evident that, amidst much that French sys- was iniquitous and oppressive, it contained several institutem of gov- tions which were worthy of admiration, and some of which were decidedly superior to the corresponding system in this country. Among these particulars, the following are in an especial manner worthy of notice. ernment. 108. liaments as courts of law. In the first place, The parliaments or courts of law in Excellence France were decidedly superior to the ambulatory courts of the par- of Westminster Hall, and the unpaid justices of England. The French courts, indeed, were subject to one single defect the result of the amalgamation of their different provinces at successive times with the monarchy of Clovis ; viz. that they were not subject to any fixed review of the supreme courts at Paris; and thus the parliaments of Bordeaux, Orleans, Aix, Lyons, Rouen, and other places, ran in many particulars into separate usages and customs, which acquired the force of law, and rendered it different in different provinces of the kingdom. But, with this exception, the parliaments were in the highest degree admirable. The magisterial class, from which their members were chiefly taken, a link between the aristocracy and the people, above the Tiers Etat, but inferior to the old noblesse, constituted perhaps the most respectable and enlightened body in France. They were infinitely superior to the unpaid and unprofessional magistracy of England. Almost all its statesmen and ministers arose from their ranks. And although the decisions of the different parliaments were at variance on several points, yet being all founded, not on statutory enactment so much as consuetudinary usage, drawn from that inexhaustible mine of wisdom the old Roman law, they were in the main consistent with each other, and constituted an extraordinary monument of legal ability and just adjudication. If any one doubts this, let him read Pothier's incomparable treatises on contracts, and the various personal rights, which are in a great degree drawn from their decisions, and he will at once perceive its superiority, on all points save commercial, to the English law.* A decisive proof of this superiority, how unwilling soever the English may be to admit it, has been afforded by one circumstance. The Code Napoleon, which now gives law to half of Europe, and has survived, in the countries where it was established, the empire of its author, is in almost all points, at least in the ordinary law between man and man, a mere transcript of the decisions of the French parliaments, as they had been digested and arranged by Pothier; a clear indication that they were founded on the principles of justice, and the experienced necessities or convenience of mankind. But we have never heard of any such retention by an independent state, unconnected by descent with England, of its statute or common law. Secondly. The circumstance which, to English ears, appears most strange, perhaps contributed more than any other to this result; viz. that the situations in the parliaments were acquired by purchase, and were consequently * The English commercial law, as it has been founded on the civil law, and matured by those great masters in jurisprudence, Lords Hardwicke, Mansfield, Kenyon, Ellenborough, and Abbott, is the first in the world. II. |