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Secondly, the parlements not only frankly criticised the proposed measures of the king and his ministers, but they familiarized the nation with the idea that the king was not really at liberty to alter what they called "the fundamental laws" of the state. By this they meant that there was an unwritten constitution, of which they were the guardians and which limited the king's power.
It refused to register the king's decrees, and remained defiant even after Louis XV had angrily announced that he would not tolerate interference with his prerogatives. The quarrel grew so bitter that all the thirteen Parlements of France were suppressed , and in their stead new royal courts were established.
Extremely important cases might be carried on appeal to the highest courts of the realm the Parlements of which there were thirteen, headed in honor by that of Paris. Although courts were so plenteous, justice was seldom to be found. Persons wrongfully accused of crime were tortured until they confessed deeds they had never committed.
The walls of the Bastille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odious feudal privileges disappear in a single sitting of the National Assembly; and the Parlements, or supreme law courts of the provinces, are swept away.
To make way for the "supremacy of the general will," they abolished the Parlements, which had maintained the old laws, customs, and privileges of their several provinces, and had frequently interfered in purely political matters.
But the Parlement of Paris, which together with the other Parlements had been restored early in the reign of Louis XVI, soon saw through the artifices of the suave minister, and positively refused to register further loans or taxes.
Next to the king's council the most important governmental bodies were the higher courts of law, the parlements. These resembled the English Parliament in almost nothing but name. The French parlements of which the most important one was at Paris and a dozen more were scattered about the provinces did not, however, confine themselves strictly to the business of trying lawsuits.
They were originally Supreme Courts of Justice, but by the fifteenth century they could not only make, on their own account, regulations having the force of laws, but had acquired independent administrative powers. Originally the "Parlement de Paris" stood alone, but as time went on, in addition to this, thirteen or fourteen local "Parlements" administered France.
The Notables, however, had no confidence in Calonne, and refused to ratify his programme of reform. Louis XVI then attempted to carry through some of the more pressing financial reforms in the usual way by sending them to the parlements to be registered. The parlement of Paris resolved, as usual, to make the king's ministry trouble and gain popularity for itself.
Besides the leading princes and seigniors we find, among one hundred and thirty-four members, twelve marshals of France, eight Councillors of State, five maitres de requetes, fourteen bishops and archbishops, twenty presidents and seventeen procureurs generaux des parlements, or of royal councils, twenty-five mayors, prevots des marchands, capitouls, and equerries of large towns, the deputies of the "Etats" of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany and Languedoc, three ministers and two chief clerks.
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