ng out by the secret
staircases in order to avoid the crowd whose shouts could be heard even
within the palace buildings. Goislard de Montsabert followed his
colleague's example: he was confined at Pierre-Encise; M. d'Espremesnil
had been taken to the Isle of St. Marguerite.

Useless and ill-judged violence, which excited the passions of the public
without intimidating opponents! The day after the scene of May 6th, at
the moment when the whole magistracy of France was growing hot over the
thrilling account of the arrest of the two councillors, the Parliament of
Paris was sent for to Versailles (May 8, 1788).

[Illustration: Arrest of the Members----502]

The magistrates knew beforehand what fate awaited them. The king uttered
a few severe words. After a pompous preamble, the keeper of the seals
read out six fresh edicts intended to ruin forever the power of the
sovereign courts.

Forty-seven great baillie-courts, as a necessary intermediary between the
parliaments and the inferior tribunals, were henceforth charged with all
civil cases not involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as
well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The
representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely
criticised the impropriety of this measure. "The ministers," they said,
"have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and
property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts,
for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the
privileged." The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was
reduced to sixty-nine. The registration of edicts, the only real
political power left in the hands of the magistrates, was transferred to
a plenary court, an old title without stability and without tradition,
composed, under the king's presidency, of the great functionaries of
state, assisted by a small number of councillors. The absolute power was
thus preparing a rampart against encroachments of authority on the part
of the sovereign courts; it had fortified itself beforehand against the
pretensions of the States-general, "which cannot pretend to be anything
but a more extended council on behalf of the sovereign, the latter still
remaining supreme arbiter of their representations and their grievances."

Certain useful ameliorations in the criminal legislation, amongst others
total abolition of torture, completed the sum of edicts. A decree of th