Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/399

 The Eve of the French Revolution 361 of the pope ? What were exactly the prerogatives of the nobles, who sometimes, and as late as the minority of Louis XIV, be- lieved themselves entitled to enforce their rights by arms and by alliances with foreign powers ; sometimes, on the other hand, acknowledged the king to be absolute? What should be the status of the third estate, emancipated by the kings from serfdom, admitted to the Estates General by Philip the Fair, and yet condemned to be always in the minority; since it was given but one vote out of three, and its grievances, presented to the king on its knees, were without any assured influence? What degree of political power rightly belonged to the par- lements, which at one time declared that they had no other duties than to administer justice, and at another proclaimed that they were Estates General in miniature, — that is, the representatives of the representatives of the people? These same parlements did not recognize the jurisdiction of the intendants who administered the provinces in the king's name. The king's ministers questioned the right claimed by the pays d'etats 1 to approve new taxes in their respective provinces. The history of France would furnish a mass of other exam- ples of this want of fixity in the least, as well as in the great- est, matters ; but it will suffice to cite some of the deplorable results of this absence of rules. Persons accused of state offenses were almost always deprived of their natural judges, and some of them passed their whole lives in prison, where the government had sent them on its own authority without trial. A code of terror was maintained for the Protestants, and cruel punishments and torture continued to exist until the Revolution. Position of the three estates of the realm. The parte- ments. Arbitrary imprisonment by lettres de cachet had begun to excite the indignation of the courts before the Revo- lution, as the following case shows. The collection of certain taxes was, for the sake of convenience, turned Arbitrary imprison- ment. 1 Namely, those provinces which retained their ancient provincial assemblies of the three orders.