f the emigrants out of the proceeds of their
possessions, it was proved that most of the large fortunes were eaten up
with mortgages.[1349] Readers of the various memoirs know that, for
two hundred years, the deficiencies had to be supplied by marriages for
money and by the favors of the king.--This explains why, following
the king's example, the nobles converted everything into money, and
especially the places at their disposition, and, in relaxing authority
for profit, why they alienated the last fragment of government remaining
in their hands. Everywhere they thus laid aside the venerated character
of a chief to put on the odious character of a trafficker. "Not only,"
says a contemporary,[1350] "do they give no pay to their officers of
justice, or take them at a discount, but, what is worse, the greater
portion of them make a sale of these offices." In spite of the edict of
1693, the judges thus appointed take no steps to be admitted into the
royal courts and they take no oaths. "What is the result? Justice, too
often administered by knaves, degenerates into brigandage or into a
frightful impunity."--Ordinarily the seignior who sells the office on a
financial basis, deducts, in addition, the hundredth, the fiftieth, the
tenth of the price, when it passes into other hands; and at other
times he disposes of the survivorship. He creates these offices and
survivorships purposely to sell them. "All the seigniorial courts,
say the registers, are infested with a crowd of officials of every
description, seigniorial sergeants, mounted and unmounted officers,
keepers of the provostship of the funds, guards of the constabulary. It
is by no means rare to find as many as ten in an arrondissement which
could hardly maintain two if they confined themselves within the limits
of their duties." Also "they are at the same time judges, attorneys,
fiscal-attorneys, registrars, notaries," each in a different place,
each practicing in several seigniories under various titles, all
perambulating, all in league like thieves at a fair, and assembling
together in the taverns to plan, prosecute and decide. Sometimes the
seignior, to economize, confers the title on one of his own dependents:
"At Hautemont, in Hainaut, the fiscal-attorney is a domestic." More
frequently he nominates some starveling advocate of a petty village in
the neighborhood on wages which would not suffice to keep him alive
a week." He indemnifies himself out of the peasants. P