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INSTITUTIONS] for any practical purpose. They only produced a few great ordinances of reform, which were not well observed. They were, however, to be called together yet again, as a result of the disturbances which followed the death of Henry IV.; but their dissensions and powerlessness were again strikingly exemplified and they did not reappear until 1789. Other bodies, however, which the royal power had created, were to carry on the struggle against it. There were the parlements, the political rivals of the states general. Thanks to the principle according to which no law came into effect so long as it had not been registered by them, they had, as we have seen, won for themselves the right of a preliminary discussion of those laws which were presented to them, and of refusing registration, explaining their reasons to the king by means of the remontrances. The royal power saw in this merely a concession from itself, a consultative power, which ought to yield before the royal will, when the latter was clearly manifested, either by lettres de jussion or by the actual words and presence of the king, when he came in person to procure the registration of a law in a so-called lit de justice. But from the 16th century onwards the members of the parlements claimed, on the strength of a historical theory, to have inherited the powers of the ancient assemblies (the Merovingian and Carolingian placita and the curia regis), powers which they, moreover, greatly exaggerated. The successful assertion of this claim would have made them at once independent of and necessary to the crown. During the minority of kings, they had possessed, in fact, special opportunities for asserting their pretensions, particularly when they had been called upon to intervene in the organization of the regency. It is on this account that at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. the parlement of Paris wished to take part in the government, and in 1648, in concert with the other supreme courts of the capital, temporarily imposed a sort of charter of liberties. But the first Fronde, of which the parlement was the centre and soul, led to its downfall, which was completed when later on Louis XIV. became all-powerful. The ordinance of 1667 on civil procedure, and above all a declaration of 1673, ordered the parlement to register the laws as soon as it received them and without any modification. It was only after this registration that they were allowed to draw up remonstrances, which were henceforth futile. The nobles, as a body, had also become politically impotent. They had been sorely tried by the wars of religion, and Richelieu, in his struggles against the governors of the provinces, had crushed their chief leaders. The second Fronde was their last effort (see ). At the same time the central government underwent changes. The great officers of the crown disappeared one by one. The office of constable of France was suppressed by purchase during the first half of the 17th century, and of those in the first rank only the chancellor survived till the Revolution. But though his title could only be taken from him by condemnation on a capital charge, the king was able to deprive him of his functions by taking from him the custody and use of the seal of France, which were entrusted to a garde des sceaux. Apart from the latter, the king’s real ministers were the secretaries of state, generally four in number, who were always removable and were not chosen from among the great nobles. For purposes of internal administration, the provinces were divided among them, each of them corresponding by despatches with those which were assigned to him. Any other business (with the exception of legal affairs, which belonged to the chancellor, and finance, of which we shall speak later) was divided among them according to convenience. At the end of the 16th century, however, were evolved two regular departments, those of war and foreign affairs. Under Francis I. and Henry II., the chief administration of finance underwent a change; for the four généraux des finances, who had become too powerful, were substituted the intendants des finances, one of whom soon became a chief minister of finance, with the title surintendant. The généraux des finances, like the trésoriers de France, became provincial officials, each at the head of a généralité (a superior administrative district for purposes of finance); under Henry II. the two functions were combined and assigned to the bureaux des finances. The fall of Fouquet led to the suppression of the office of surintendant; but soon Colbert again became practically a minister of finance, under the name of contrôleur général des finances, both title and office continuing to exist up to the Revolution.

The conseil du roi, the origin of which we have described, was an important organ of the central government, and for a long time included among its members a large number of representatives of the nobility and clergy. Besides the councillors of state (conseillers d’état), its ordinary members, the great officers of the crown and secretaries of state, princes of the blood and peers of France were members of it by right. Further, the king was accustomed to grant the brevet of councillor to a great number of the nobility and clergy, who could be called upon to sit in the council and give an opinion on matters of importance. But in the 17th century the council tended to differentiate its functions, forming three principal sections, one for political, one for financial, and the third for legal affairs. Under Louis XIV. it took a definitely professional, administrative and technical character. The conseillers à brevet were all suppressed in 1673, and the peers of France ceased to be members of the council. The political council, or conseil d’en haut, had no ex officio members, not even the chancellor; the secretary of state for foreign affairs, however, necessarily had entry to it; it also included a small number of persons chosen by the king and bearing the title of ministers of state (ministres d’état). The other important sections of the conseil du roi were the conseil des finances, organized after the fall of Fouquet, and the conseil des dépêches, in which sat the four secretaries of state and where everything concerned with internal administration (except finance) was dealt with, including the legal business connected with this administration. As to the government and the preparation of laws, under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., the conseil du roi often passed into the background, when, as the saying went, a minister who was projecting some important measure travaillait seul avec le roi (worked alone with the king), having from the outset gained the king’s ear.

The chief authority in the provincial administration belonged in the 16th century to the governors of the provinces, though, strictly speaking, the governor had only military powers in his gouvernement; for, as we have seen, he was the direct representative of the king for general

purposes. But at the end of this century were created the intendants of the provinces, who, after a period of conflict with the governors and the parlements, became absolute masters of the administration in all those provinces which had no provincial estates, and the instruments of a complete administrative centralization (see ).

The towns having a corps de ville, that is to say, a municipal organization, preserved in the 16th century a fairly wide autonomy, and played an important part in the wars of religion, especially under the League. But under Louis XIV. their independence rapidly declined.

They were placed under the tutelage of the intendants, whose sanction, or that of the conseil du roi, was necessary for all acts of any importance. In the closing years of the 17th century, the municipal officials ceased, even in principle, to be elective. Their functions ranked as offices which were, like royal offices, saleable and heritable. The pretext given by the edicts were the intrigues and dissensions caused by the elections; the real cause was that the government wanted to sell these offices, which is proved by the fact that it frequently allowed towns to redeem them and to re-establish the elections.

The sale of royal offices is one of the characteristic features of the ancien régime. It had begun early, and, apparently, with the office of councillor of the parlement of Paris, when this became permanent, in the second half of the 14th century. It was first practised by magistrates who

wished to dispose of their office in favour of a successor of their own choice. The resignatio in favorem of ecclesiastical benefices served as model, and at first care was taken to conceal the money transaction between the parties. The crown winked at these resignations in consideration of a payment in money.