hose who
obstinately insist on regarding the feudal ages as ages of brute force,
to know that so early as in 1175 the citizens of Chauny, by the
lieutenant of the bailliage, Messire Regnault Doucet, asserted and
successfully maintained before the royal representatives their right to
fish in all the waters round about their town in all lawful ways against
the pretensions of no less a personage than the Duchesse d'Orleans. In
1540 this right was confirmed to them anew, and it was then shown that
at an inquest held in 1475 the witnesses had testified that from time
whereof the memory of man ran not to the contrary no citizen of Chauny
had ever been molested in the exercise of his right to fish in the
waters of Chauny either on behalf of the Duc d'Orleans or on behalf of
the King. The local archives, which are singularly rich and
well-preserved, are full of instances like this, which show that the
general current of life in this corner of France, long before the
Revolution, was determined neither by the caprices of the great, nor by
the passions of the mob, but by systematic considerations of law and of
tradition, until for the confusion of France, and more or less of the
civilised world, the natural evolution and development of law and order
were suddenly and insanely interrupted through the inconceivable
weakness of a most amiable and useless king, by the 'wild asses' of
Mirabeau, acting in 1789 under the pressure of what so friendly an
eyewitness of their conduct as Gouverneur Morris calls the 'abominable'
populace of Paris.

So complete was the civilisation of this region long before the
Revolution of 1789, that the mayor, the magistrates, and the citizens of
Chauny, early in the seventeenth century, succeeded in breaking down and
ruining an Italian gentleman, Cesare de Rusticis, who, thanks to
Concini, had secured a royal patent for canalising the Oise from La Fere
to Chauny. They got a notable advocate, M. Louis Vrevin, to draw up a
protest against the enterprise in the most florid and elaborate fashion
of the _Plaideurs_ of Racine, and by dint of bombarding the King's
Council with the names of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Xerxes, Sesostris,
Cleopatra, Cicero, Tertullian, and others, got, in 1625, what we in
America now call an 'injunction,' putting a stop to the works begun by
this foreigner, who 'had come into France to fix the eye of curiosity
upon the river Oyse and to disturb it.' And a century later I find an
operati