III. 1774. 20. of the step At length, Maurepas, Malesherbes, and Turgot prevailed; CHAP. and on the 21st October 1774, the circular was signed by the King, which recalled the exiled parliament of Paris. This great victory of the popular party deserves to be especially marked as the first step in the chain of causes Importance and effects which ultimately overturned the monarchy. thus taken. For the first time since the days of the Cardinal Richelieu, the court had now openly receded: the ruling authority was felt to be elsewhere than at Versailles; a power had risen up greater than the throne. It was not, however, behind the throne, and overshadowing its determinations ; it was in front of the throne, and intimidating it. As may well be supposed, the King acquired unbounded popularity by this act. His name was repeated with enthu bearing of new edicts on the existing rights of individual or public bodies. On these principles the exiling of the late parliament was an arbitrary stretch of power, which never should have been made: the confiscation of offices by which it was followed was a still more iniquitous measure: the noblesse and princes of the blood can legally sit in no other parliament but that of Paris; their presence in any other assembly is forced and illegal the new parliament of M. de Maupeou has no legal foundation; the true and only parliament is that which is composed of the king, the princes of the blood, the peers, and the members whose offices had been arbitrarily confiscated, without forfeiture or legal process, by the late monarch." To these weighty and able arguments, it was answered by Monsieur and the Comte d'Artois,-"The exiled magistracy had reared up in the state a rival authority to counterbalance that of our king, and establish a monstrous equilibrium, or rather a dead-lock, which must necessarily paralyse administration, and plunge the kingdom into anarchy. What would become of the authority of the king if these magistrates, linked together in every province by a general association, should form a united body, determined to suspend at will the royal functions, stop the registering and execution of the laws, and even suspend at pleasure the administration of justice between man and man? It is said the dismissal of the late parliament was an arbitrary act; admitting it was, what rendered it necessary? Why, a universal resolution on their part to cease performing their functions, and thereby paralyse the whole administration of justice throughout the kingdom. Is the late king to be blamed because, resisted by so unparalleled and factious a combination, he met it by an unwonted act of vigour, suited to the exigencies of the moment? For ages the parliament have maintained a sourd but incessant warfare against our kings. Their pretexts have always been the public good, and the interest of the people, objects which they constantly sacrificed; and now it is gravely proposed to reinstate these magistrates in functions which they have so scandalously abused, and of which they were so justly deprived. Shall the late king be virtually convicted of having exiled and despoiled faithful magistrates, when he only broke up an illegal combination, which proposed to take the crown off his head by universally stopping the administration of justice? What an example III. 1774. CHAP. siasm in the streets; the Queen became more popular than ever; the exiled parliament was the object of universal enthusiasm and the dismissed ministers were assailed ; with cutting couplets and sarcasms. More sagacious observers, however, prognosticated little good from a revolution in government, which commenced by the crown openly receding before a popular body in a contest for power, instead of effecting a redress of the grievances which were complained of; and did not hesitate to prophesy, that in recalling the parliament the King had signed the warrant for his own eventual dethronement.1* Certain it is, that the members of that body were not slow in showing that they entertained little gratitude towards their benefactor, that their ambition was not likely to diminish with their 1 Weber, i. 118, 120. Soul. ii. 172, 221. to the firmness of kings! What an encouragement to the violence of the people! To preserve his crown, to continue the administration of affairs, Louis XV. created new magistrates in lieu of the factious body of whom he had got quit-shall they be now confiscated and removed as a reward for having replaced the crown on his royal head? Shall the kingdom be anew exposed to the calamities consequent on the ambition of a magistracy, the enemies of the clergy and rivals of the noblesse, the only true support of the throne — which carried political passion into the judgment-seat, and even universally suspended the discharge of their duty to extort a concession from the crown? Let it not be supposed that the exiled magistrates will be either grateful or reasonable if they are restored to their functions. They will return as gentle as lambs; they will soon become as rampant as lions: for all their acts of disobedience they will allege the interest of the state, the people, and their lord the king. In their most flagrant acts of disobedience they will say they are obeying their constitution; the populace will fly to their succour, and the royal authority will one day sink under the weight of their resistance. Such will be the consequence of sacrificing the submissive magistracy which does its duty, to the rebellious magistracy which does not."-Mémoires de M. LE DUC D'ORLEANS, et de MONSIEUR FRERE DU ROI, Sept. 1774, given in SOULAVIE, ii. 206, 214. Nothing can be more curious and instructive than these able arguments, which throw so much light on the great constitutional question at issue in France in their debate, and which lay bare that awful question of where the supreme power is really to reside, which it is one important object of a constitutional monarchy to shroud from public gaze. * Monsieur Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII., made a last effort to dissuade his brother from taking this step, in an able memoir, which concluded with the following words ;- -“Je résume les services du parlement actuel et les crimes du parlement exilé. Le parlement actuel a remis sur la tête du roi la couronne que le parlement en exil lui avait ôtée, et M. de Maupeou, que vous avez exilé, a fait au roi le procès que les rois vos aïeux soutenaient contre les parlements depuis deux siècles: le procès a été jugé, et vous, mon frère, vous cassez le jugement pour recommencer la procédure."-MONSIEUR au Roi, Sept. 28, 1774; SOULAVIE, ii. 221, 222. success, and that they regarded themselves as victors in a conflict in which no alternative remained to the crown but submission. CHAP. III. 1774. 21. of the par Oct. 22, The first act of the parliament of Paris was to protest, the day after its re-establishment, against the very edict Ingratitude which had re-established it — against the lit de justice in liament. which its life had been restored, and against all the pre- 1774. cautions and restraints by which Miromesnil had fondly Dec. 2. imagined he had erected a perpetual barrier against its encroachments; and soon after, the princes and peers were recalled by an act of their own, which restored all their former consideration. Maurepas himself was not long of experiencing their gratitude. On the evening before their installation he had been at the opera, where he was received with thunders of applause by a crowded audience. Next day he went to the hall of the parliament, expecting to meet with the same reception from the exiled members. "You must retire, sir," said M. d'Aguesseau, their chairman; "you have no right to be here."-"Do not disturb yourself," replied the imperturbable minister; "I have not come here to sit down, but only on my way to the lanterne.*" The important consequences of the irretrievable step thus taken were fully appreciated at the time by the opponents of the measure. "Read," said they, "the history of England; you will there see the parliament for long at issue with the king: the popular party prevailed at last. Dastardly ministers persuaded the monarch to abandon the defenders of his authority; they were destroyed. The parliament was only rendered thereby the more audacious: the king became sensible he must resume his rights, but it was no longer in his power; and the throne fell under the strokes of republican ambition.1 monarchical government becomes republican when the Jan. 1775. depositaries of the royal authority abuse the power intrusted to them, of making themselves obeyed in the name A Corresponding to the lantern of the old House of Commons, where ladies heard the debates. Mémoire du Maré chal de Richelieu, Soul. ii. 263, 264. CHAP. of the laws, by setting the first example of rewarding those who disobey them." III. 1774. 22. Change in the system of govern ment. 1 Soul. ii. 267, 269. 23. The revolution in the system of government which followed the recall of the parliament was more important than that recall itself, which was in truth only a symptom, and the first effect, of the previous change. The system of government hitherto pursued had been, in Cardinal Fleury's words, "to allow France to follow its own course; to surrender it without constraint to the bent of the national genius, and only to take care that that genius was not altered." But that system was no longer practicable, for the national mind itself had changed — and changed to such a degree as to render it no longer possible to carry on the government on the old maxims. Necessity in such circumstances prescribed change, wisdom counselled it; but it counselled at the same time such change only as should be founded on experience and observation, and as little as possible at variance with existing habits and institutions. Instead of this, Turgot and the Economists proposed to remould France entirely after a model drawn from the schools of philosophy; to disregard alike custom, prejudice, experience, in their innovations; and recast a kingdom of a thousand years' standing as they would found a colony landed for the first time on an uninhabited shore. It is not surprising that in such an attempt they overturned the monarchy.1 TURGOT, who took the lead in this great scheme of Birth and general change, was born in Paris in the year 1729-so early history that he was forty-seven years of age when he was admitted of Turgot. into the ministry. He was the son of a public functionary, who had rendered his name respectable by the probity of his administration in an important situation in the capital; and even from his earliest years, the future minister was distinguished by his thirst for knowledge, and the gravity and severity of his manners. At first destined for the church, he passed with distinction through the schools of the Sorbonne; and at that period pronounced an III. 1774. eloquent oration on the blessings which mankind had CHAP. derived from the Christian religion.* It would have been well for him and his country if he had adhered through life to the wise and enlightened views which he then entertained. The next discourse which he delivered, two years after, showed, however, the new bent which his mind had taken; it was on "The successive advances of the human mind," and gave indication of uncommon power of thought, accompanied, at the same time, by an undue estimate of the nature of men. He soon evinced a distaste for the ecclesiastical profession; said he could not consent to "wear a mask through life on his face ;" and, leaving the church, devoted himself to the magistracy as a profession, and at the same time applied, with the utmost vigour, to the study of almost every branch of knowledge. In 1752, he obtained the official situation of councillor of parliament, and, in the course of the vehement disputes between the Jesuits and Jansenists, which then agitated the kingdom, published a pamphlet, entitled, "Letters on Toleration," which had a great influence at the time, and procured him immediate admission to the literary circles of the capital. Though he continued his philosophic labours, and translated a great many works, both in prose and verse, from several languages, yet the bent of his genius Mém. sur led him strongly to the cultivation of political science, and Turgot, en he soon became a devoted worshipper of Quesnay and the Euvres de sect of the Economists.1 In 1761 he was appointed inten- 28, and Biog. Univ. dant of the Limousin, which office he held till 1773, and xlvii. 63,71. in that situation he had ample opportunity of putting in 276, 278. practice his numerous benevolent and philanthropic pro * "La morale des payens," said he in this oration, "n'avoit connu que l'art de former des citoyens d'une telle nation, ou des philosophes distingués par la prééminence de leurs maximes, supérieures à celles de leurs contemporains. La morale Chrétienne, au contraire, avait pour base des maximes et des devoirs obligatoires, et créait dans l'homme un nouvel homme. Elle était la protectrice de l'égalité des droits, elle travailla à la destruction de l'esclavage domestique et de celui de la glèbe: elle contribua par la douceur de ses maximes à fléchir l'esprit inquiet et turbulent des peuples de l'antiquité."-Mémoire de L'ABBE TURGOT, given in SOULAVIE, ii. 274. 1 Dupin, téte des Turgot, i. Soul. ii. |