Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

1788.]

THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS.

163

as some of the provincial Parlements. They were restored to their functions, by Louis XVI., in 1774. In 1785 the Parlement of Paris refused to register an edict for a large loan; but the peremptory command of the king overpowered them. Calonne had then recourse to an Assembly of Notables, which was dissolved in 1787, as we have seen. One of the new taxes proposed by Loménie was a project of raising money by stamps. The Parlement of Paris refused to register the edict, unless the financial accounts were submitted to their examination. At the beginning of August, they came to a resolution that a perpetual tax, such as that required to be registered, could only be imposed by the States-General. Then commenced a collision between the Crown and the only body that stood between the Crown and its absolute power. According to the old forms of the monarchy, a Bed of Justice was to be held-a ceremony in which the Parlement should meet the king face to face, and hear his positive commands to register his decrees. On the 6th of August this command is given at Versailles. The Parlement returns to Paris, and refuses to obey the solemn mandate, even though it issued from a Bed of Justice. The refractory Parlement must be put down. The members are banished to Troyes. Paris is in a state of furious excitement. Large bodies of troops are marched into the city to suppress the growing disposition towards violence. At length a compromise is effected. The obnoxious edicts for taxation are withdrawn; and another is proposed and accepted, which recognized equality of taxation without exemptions. The Parlement is now recalled from its exile. On the 19th of November, the king held a royal sitting (séance royal), when he carried to the Parlement an edict for a succession of loans for five years, amounting to nineteen millions sterling. He also submitted to them an edict for the relief of the Protestants. He called upon them to confine their functions to their ancient powers, and to show an example of loyalty and obedience. Violent discussions ensued, in which the duke of Orleans, the relative of the king, took part against the Court. The king departed, after a contest of nine hours, and the Parlement declared the edicts null and void. The next day the duke was banished to one of his country seats; and two of the most refractory members of the Parlement were arrested by lettres de cachet. Temporary expedients for raising money must be resorted to, till something could be done with this. rebellious Parlement. Loménie had his scheme ready. It was to establish a grand Council of State, to be called "La Cour Plenière," which should dispense with the Parlements, and yet give a sanction to taxation that might be more satisfactory than the mere exercise of the royal authority. The plan was concocted in secret; but it became known, and produced the greatest agitation in the Parlement of Paris. Two of its most violent opponents, M. d'Espremenil and M. de Montsabert, were ordered to be arrested. They were taken into custody during a sitting of the Parlement, in which, after the example of the Commons of England, when Charles the First went to arrest the five members, not one of the Parlement would point out the persons demanded by a military force. D'Espremenil and Montsabert surrendered, and were taken to prison. The provincial Parlements were now in a state of revolt. The people were furious with excitement. The day after the arrest of the members, the king held another Bed of Justice at Versailles, in which he proposed a number of salutary reforms in six edicts,

164

RECALL OF NECKER.

[1789.

which provided for the more rapid administration of justice; which regulated the proceedings of the Parlement of Paris; which put all criminal procedure upon a footing which swept away many odious and cruel abuses; which established "La Cour Plenière"; which provided for local courts; and which suspended the proceedings of all other courts. These reforms, admirable as some were, were rejected. The edicts became waste paper, through the short-sightedness of the Parlement and the violence of the people. A visitation of Providence then became the cause of general distress. A tremendous hailstorm, on the 13th of July, 1788, destroyed, in many dis tricts, the crops of corn and the vineyards. The ruin was almost total for sixty leagues round Paris. An edict was issued on the 8th of August, that the States-General should be assembled in May of the following year. The royal Treasury was becoming empty, and no means of warding off the pressure of the demands of the public creditors but by a measure declaratory of insolvency. The Treasury payments shall, according to a proclamation of the 16th of August, henceforth be three-fifths in money and two-fifths in paper. The alarm was universal. The Court was terrified. There was no hope but in the recall of Necker, to become Controller of the Finances. Loménie was dismissed, with the solace of more ecclesiastical preferments. Paris was in a state of riot, which was suppressed with some bloodshed. But hope returned with the presence of Necker. He found himself a financial minster without finances. Offers of loans poured in upon him. The funds rose thirty per cent. The popular cause had triumphed, and Necker was the minister of the people. Nothing remained to do, but to provide for the meeting of the States-General. An Assembly of Notables was again convened. They recommended that each of the three Estates, the Clergy, the Noblesse, and the Tiers État, should send three hundred members.

[graphic][merged small]

By the advice of Necker, the king issued an edict that the Clergy and the Noblesse should each elect three hundred members, and the Tiers État six hundred. The States-General were to assemble on the 4th of May, 1789. The elections began in January,

On the morning of Monday, the 4th of May, the streets of Versailles were filled with thousands of people, to gaze upon the procession of the Court and

1789.]

MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL.

165

the States-General from the church of St. Louis, where all had assembled, to the church of Notre Dame, where a sermon was to be preached. Two hundred and seventy-five years had passed since a king of France had met the States-General. As if to mark the long interval, the costume of the States-General of 1614 was prescribed. The clergy went first--the bishops in velvet robes and rochets, the curés in their plainer dress. The Noblesse came next, in embroidered velvet mantles and gold vests, laced cravats, white plumes in their hats, such as Henri Quatre wore. The Tiers État came last, in plain black mantles, white cravats, and unfeathered hats. Lastly, came the king beneath a sumptuous canopy, with the queen, the princesses and

[graphic]

Marie-Antoinette. From a Portrait by Duplessi-Bertaux.

high-born dames, and the king's brothers. The duke of Orleans had contrived to walk in the last rank of the Nobles, that he might appear to mingle with the first of the Commons. The marquis de Ferrières has painted the scene with the most gorgeous tints-the respectful silence of the immense crowd, the windows filled with elegantly dressed ladies, the joy speaking from their brilliant eyes, the clapping of hands, the sound of trumpets, the chant of the priests, ravishing picture: "I called to mind the words of the prophet, Daughters of Jerusalem, your king advances; take your nuptial robes and run before him: tears of joy flowed from my eyes." The daughter of Necker was at one of the windows. "I was abandoning myself," she says, "to the most lively hopes at seeing, for the first time in France, representatives of the nation. Madame de Montmorin said to me, 'You are wrong in rejoicing; out of this there will come great disasters for France and for us.'"+

The next day the States-General was opened. A large hall in the avenue of the palace had been provided for the assembly. This Salle des Menus, as it was called, was of sufficient size to contain the twelve hundred members,

* "Mémoires de Ferrières."

+ Madame de Staël-"Considérations sur la Révolution."

166

EXCITEMENT OF PARIS.

[1789.

with galleries for spectators. There was a platform for the king and his Court. Louis-with Marie-Antoinette by his side, looking pale and ill at ease -read an address, of which the principal subject was that of the finances. When the reading was finished, the king put on his hat, as he took his seat on the throne. The clergy and the nobility also put on their hats. Some of the Tiers État also took this mode of asserting their position, and there was great confusion, which the king stopped by taking off his own hat. The costume of the Third Estate was the same as in 1614, but the sentiment which then required them to kneel in the presence of the sovereign was gone. The keeper of the seals made a speech; and so did Necker, the Controller-General of the Finances-a speech which Arthur Young said was such "as you would expect from a banking clerk of some ability." The difficult question, whether the three estates should deliberate and vote in one body, or in separate chambers, was not touched upon. It seemed to have been arranged that, contrary to the strong opinion that had been expressed by some of the constituencies, the discussions and the votes should not take place in one common assembly. It had been intended that four chambers should be provided; one for the solemn meetings of the three orders together; and for each distinct order a separate chamber. By some difference between the Court functionaries, who were of more importance than the sovereign or his ministers, the building set apart for the Commons was refused to be given up by the administration of the stables. The Salle des Menus was therefore occupied by the Third Estate. The Clergy and the Nobles met in their appropriated chambers, and proceeded to the verification of their powers, having decided to do so by the votes of a majority in each of the two orders. The Commons refused to proceed to a separate verification; and for five weeks this contest went on, but without any decisive results, of speeches and resolutions.

Milton has eloquently described the intellectual fervour of London in the early days of the Long Parliament. "The shop of war hath not more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice, in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation."* But in Paris, in 1789, the literary activity was of a very different character from that of London in 1644. There was the same disputing and discoursing upon "things not before discoursed or written of;" but in London "the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed" had regard to the differences of doctrine rather than the destruction of religion; and contemplated resistance to arbitrary power rather than the overthrow of all lawful authority. During the first month of the meeting of the States-General, Arthur Young was in Paris, and "was much in company." He found "a general ignorance of the principles of government; a strange and unaccountable appeal, on one side, to ideal and visionary rights of nature; and, on the other, no settled plan that shall give security to the people for being in future in a much better situation than hitherto." + He saw the booksellers' shops filled with eager crowds, squeezing from the door to the counter to buy the pamphlet of the last hour. He "Travels in France," p. 105.

# (6 'Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,"

1789.]

MODE OF PROCEDURE IN THE TIERS ÉTAT.

167

saw the coffee-houses in the Palais Royal not only crowded within, but other crowds without, listening to orators who, from chairs or tables, harangued each his audience. The pamphlets and the orators were admired, exactly in the proportion in which they attacked Christianity with a sort of rage, without any attempt to substitute any other belief; and proposed to the French people, not that their affairs should be better conducted, but that they should take the conduct of them into their own hands-they "a people so illprepared to act for themselves, that they could not undertake a universal and simultaneous reform without a universal destruction." *

On the 14th of June, Arthur Young repaired to the Salle des Menus to behold what was to him, as it was to most Englishmen, a scene eminently interesting "the spectacle of the representatives of twenty-five millions of people, just emerging from the evils of two hundred years of arbitrary power, and rising to the blessings of a freer constitution, assembled with open doors under the eye of the public."+ His feelings were roused; but he saw how the irregularities of the proceedings showed the representatives of the people to be without that self-control, in the absence of which a deliberative assembly is only an organized mob. The spectators in the gallery were allowed to applaud; a hundred members were on their legs at one time; the president, Bailly, absolutely without the means of keeping order. Specific motions,

[graphic][merged small]

founded on distinct propositions, were drowned in abstract declarations, producing interminable harangues. Thus had the Tiers Etat been debating for five weeks. But with all their mistakes of procedure they clung firmly to their principle, that they would have no verification of their powers, except in common with the other Orders. The stronger this inertia in the halls of the States-General, the more active was the public feeling without doors. Tumults were expected. Clubs, that afterwards became memorable, stimulated the popular agitation. The excessive price of bread had already produced riots in the provinces. The Court is alarmed. At length something more definite than the orations in the Palais Royal produces a terror that may end in some conflict between the Orders amongst themselves, or of the "Travels," p. 110.

Tocqueville, p. 305.

« AnteriorContinuar »