For the administration of the city of Paris, and with the design of replacing the various seigneurial, ecclesiastic, and municipal authorities by one royal one, a decree was issued as early as 1674, in which all these justices, "and even that of our bailiwick of the palace, shall be reunited to the siège présidial de la prévosté et vicomté de Paris, held at the Châtelet, … so that in the future they shall never be separated from it, nor re-established, for any cause, or under any pretext whatsoever." A second seat of the prévôté and vicomté of Paris was established at the same time at the Châtelet with the same powers and prerogatives as the other,—the number of affairs being much too great for the cognizance of one jurisdiction. A supplemental decree, some months later, established the seat of the second in the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This abolition of the divers administrations of justice by the seigneurs was greatly appreciated by the populace, and greatly resented by the deposed lords, secular and ecclesiastical. In 1687, a magistrate, Nicolas de la Reynie, was appointed as superintendent of the police of Paris, and he was succeeded, ten years later, by the Marquis d'Argenson,—these being the first two lieutenants de police. This police, in addition to maintaining the public order, exercised a surveillance over all printed and written matter—even searching the post and opening suspected letters in the cabinet noir, and making itself a servile instrument in the abuse of the lettres de cachet through which, as the president of the Cour des Aides, Malesherbes said to Louis XV in 1770: "no citizen has any assurance that his liberty may not at any moment be sacrificed to some personal vengeance."
An edict of 1705, recalling that, in 1690, la noblesse au premier degré had been bestowed upon the president, councillors, and other officers "of our Cour de Parlement de Paris;" that in 1691 the same privileges had been granted to the presidents, councillors, and other officers "of our Cour des Aydes de Paris;" in 1704, on the officers of the Chambre des Comptes, granted also this nobility to the presidents, treasurers-general of France, avocat, procureur, and greffier en chef of the bureau of finance. In the following year, the privileges of this nobility were granted to the échevins, the procureur, the greffier, and receiver of the city of Paris, and the prévôt of the merchants was given the title of chevalier. Following the ancient traditions of the French monarchy, the king preferred to see himself served by the men of the middle classes, rather than by the powerful lords, whose rôle was reduced to that of obsequious courtiers in his antechamber, but, "in working with the bourgeois, the grandson of Henri IV wished to remain always le roi des gentilshommes."
In the person of Louis XV the most ignoble vices of a man were united to those of a king, but he had sufficient intelligence to foresee the calamity that was coming. "The thing will last at least as long as I do," he said, "my successor may get out of it the best way he can." And to Madame Pompadour is credited the famous saying: "After us, the deluge." When the minister Choiseul was disgraced, in 1770, half the nobles deserted the court to follow him to his estate of Chanteloup, near Amboise,—so much had the splendor of Versailles, that great glory of the reign of the Roi-Soleil, departed!
There were thirteen parlements and four provincial councils in France having sovereign jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases; the authority of the Parlement of Paris covered two-fifths of the kingdom. The chambres des comptes, the cours des aides, and the cours des monnaies judged all cases relating to the imposts, to the coinage, and to bullion. The grand conseil, the requêtes de l'Hôtel, the tribunal of the University of Paris, the capitaineries royales, etc., had each a special jurisdiction. Certain persons could only be judged by certain tribunals. In 1735, the Parlement having despatched its first president and several of its members to the king, then at Compiègne, to remonstrate with him, Louis XV informed them that he "forbade his Parlement to meet, to issue any decree, or to deliberate in any manner on the affairs of State; that they were to assemble only to receive his orders and to execute them, and that they had better not constrain him to make them feel the weight of his authority." In September of the same year, he summoned them to a bed of justice at Versailles, contrary to all precedent, and when they returned protesting, all the presidents and conseillers des enquêtes and requêtes were summarily banished to different cities in the kingdom by lettres de cachet. In 1753, the whole body was sent into exile, at Soissons, and to replace it the king created a chambre royale, which held its sittings at the Louvre, but which, though duly registered at the Châtelet au très exprès commandement du roi, was received with such contempt for its authority and such general levity that the members "became so well accustomed to it that they frequently assembled laughing, and made jests of their own decrees." The Parisians, who ridicule everything, declared that these members enjoyed themselves greatly at the masked ball during the Carnival, because none of them were recognized.
The members of the Parlement returned from their exile as contumacious as ever. Against the express command of the king, they persisted in occupying themselves with religious questions and manifesting a spirit of opposition to the pretensions of the Papacy. The public excitement was so great that a wretch named Damiens attempted to assassinate the king, in 1757, but only wounded him slightly. In 1770, the Duc d'Aiguillon, Governor of Brittany, having been relieved of his post and formally accused by the parlement of that province, was brought to trial before the Parlement of Paris in his quality of peer of the realm. He was about to be condemned when the king, in a bed of justice, quashed the proceedings. To the indignant protests of the magistrates, who suspended their sittings, Louis XV replied by dismissing his minister, Choiseul, and giving his post to D'Aiguillon. On the night of the 19th and 20th of January, 1771, a hundred and sixty-nine of the members of the Parlement were each awakened by two musketeers, who required them to sign yes or no on the order to resume their official functions. Thirty-eight signed yes, but retracted this consent two days later; on the following night a huissier notified the members of their suspension from office, and the musketeers brought them lettres de cachet which banished them all in different directions. At the end of the year there were more than seven hundred magistrates in exile. The king transformed his council into a parlement, under the presidency of M. Maupeou, from whom it took its name, but it was received with a storm of popular insult and ridicule. Public opinion throughout the nation was aroused; all the princes of the blood, excepting one, and thirteen peers protested to the king "against the reversal of the laws of the State," and the name of the États Généraux was openly pronounced in the parlements of Toulouse, Besançon, Rouen, and even in Paris. "Richelieu and Louis XIV had destroyed the political importance of the nobility; Louis XV destroyed the great institution of the magistracy,—what was there remaining to prop up the ancient edifice and to cover the monarchy?"
The ribald Parisians circulated this Pater, and found amusement in it: "Our Father who art at Versailles, your name be glorified, your reign is shaken, your will is executed no more on the earth than in heaven; give us our daily bread, which you have taken from us; pardon your parlements, which have sustained your interests, as you pardon your ministers who have sold them: do not succumb any longer to the temptations of the Du Barry, but deliver us from the devil of the chancellor."
In the midst of the general decadence, which affected alike royalty, the clergy, and the nobles, in the general confusion and inequality of all laws and procedure, a formidable spirit of investigation began to stir. The nation had no written constitution, everything depended upon custom, and was maintained only by a sort of public opinion, which constantly varied. The contradictions and anomalies in all branches of the public administration were rendered even more hopeless by the general corruption and clashing of individual interests: "France has no general, positive, written law … which defines all the powers," said Lally Tollendal in the chambre de la noblesse in 1789. Both the civil and the penal law bristled with the most flagrant injustice, the accused was frequently allowed no defence; torture, mutilations, and the death-penalty were awarded with the most shocking facility and for the most inadequate crimes,—the complete innocence of the victim was but too frequently recognized after his execution. "If I were accused of having stolen the towers of Notre-Dame," said one, "I would consider it prudent to run away." The right of asylum was still maintained in Paris in the enclosure of the Temple, as in the Middle Ages; in 1768, "poor devils were sent to the galleys for having sold certain books, among them