the law you are king, and you cannot reign but by it,"
said the Parliament of Dijon's declaration, drawn up by one of the
mortarcap presidents (_presidents a mortier_), the gifted president De
Brosses. The princes were banished; the provincial Parliaments,
mutilated like that of Paris or suppressed like that of Rouen, which was
replaced by two superior councils, ceased to furnish a centre for
critical and legal opposition. Amidst the rapid decay of absolute power,
the transformation and abasement of the Parliaments by Chancellor Maupeou
were a skilful and bold attempt to restore some sort of force and unity
to the kingly authority. It was thus that certain legitimate claims had
been satisfied, the extent of jurisdictions had been curtailed, the
salability of offices had been put down, the expenses of justice had been
lessened. Voltaire had for a long time past been demanding these
reforms, and he was satisfied with them. "Have not the Parliaments often
been persecuting and barbarous?" he wrote; "I wonder that the _Welches_
[i. e., Barbarians, as Voltaire playfully called the French] should take
the part of those insolent and intractable cits." He added, however,
"Nearly all the kingdom is in a boil and consternation; the ferment is as
great in the provinces as in Paris itself."

The ferment subsided without having reached the mass of the nation; the
majority of the princes made it up with the court, the dispossessed
magistrates returned one after another to Paris, astonished and mortified
to see justice administered without them and advocates pleading before
the Maupeou Parliament. The chancellor had triumphed, and remained
master; all the old jurisdictions were broken up, public opinion was
already forgetting them; it was occupied with a question more important
still than the administration of justice. The ever-increasing disorder
in the finances was no longer checked by the enregistering of edicts; the
comptroller-general, Abbe Terray, had recourse shamelessly to every
expedient of a bold imagination to fill the royal treasury; it was
necessary to satisfy the ruinous demands of Madame Dubarry and of the
depraved courtiers who thronged about her. Successive bad harvests and
the high price of bread still further aggravated the position. It was
known that the king had a taste for private speculation; he was accused
of trading in grain and of buying up the stores required for feeding the
people. The odious rumo