ch are so dear to parliamentary
minds! It was a matter of signing yes or no. Surprised in their
slumbers, but still firm in their resolution of resistance, the majority
of the magistrates signed no. They were immediately sent into
banishment; their offices were confiscated. Those members of the
Parliament from whom weakness or astonishment had surprised a yes
retracted as soon as they were assembled, and underwent the same fate as
their colleagues. On the 23d of January, members delegated by the grand
council, charged with the provisional administration of justice, were
installed in the Palace by the chancellor himself. The registrar-in-
chief, the ushers, the attorneys, declined or eluded the exercise of
their functions; the advocates did not come forward to plead. The Court
of Aids, headed by Lamoignon de Malesherbes, protested against the attack
made on the great bodies of the state. "Ask the nation themselves, sir,"
said the president, "to mark your displeasure with the Parliament of
Paris, it is proposed to rob them--themselves--of the essential rights of
a free people." The Court of Aids was suppressed like the Parliament;
six superior councils, in the towns of Arras, Blois, Chalons-sur-Marne,
Lyon, Clermont, and Poitiers parcelled out amongst them the immense
jurisdiction of Paris; the members of the grand council, assisted by
certain magistrates of small esteem, definitively took the places of the
banished, to whom compensation was made for their offices. The king
appeared in person on the 13th of April, 1771, at the new Parliament;
the chancellor read out the edicts. "You have just heard my intentions,"
said Louis XV.; "I desire that they may be conformed to. I order you to
commence your duties. I forbid any deliberation contrary to my wishes
and any representations in favor of my former Parliament, for I shall
never change."

One single prince of the blood, the Count of La Marche, son of the Prince
of Conti, had been present at the bed of justice. All had protested
against the suppression of the Parliament. "It is one of the most useful
boons for monarchs and of those most precious to Frenchmen," said the
protest of the princes, "to have bodies of citizens, perpetual and
irremovable, avowed at all times by the kings and the nation, who, in
whatever form and under whatever denomination they may have existed,
concentrate in themselves the general right of all subjects to invoke the
law." "Sir, by