HKB
the Cour des Aides, said to Louis XIV. (see "Mèmoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Droit Public de la France eft matiere d'lmpots," p. 654, printed at Brussels in 1779):
"Every corporation and every community of citizens retained the right of administering its own affairs; a right which not only forms part of the primitive constitution of the kingdom, but has a still higher origin; for it is the right of nature and of reason. Nevertheless, your subjects, sire, have been deprived of it; and we cannot refrain from saying that in this respect your government has fallen into puerile extremes. From the time when powerful ministers made it a political principle to prevent the convocation of a national assembly, one consequence has succeeded another, until the deliberations of the inhabitants of a village are declared null when they have not been authorized by the intendant. Of course, if the community have an expensive undertaking to carry through, it must remain under the control of the sub-delegate of the intendant, and consequently follow the plan he proposes, employ his favorite workmen, pay them according to his pleasure; and if an action at law is deemed necessary, the intendant's permission must be obtained. The cause must be pleaded before this first tribunal, previous to its being carried into a public court; and if the opinion of the intendant is opposed to that of the inhabitants, or if their adversary enjoys his favor, the community is deprived of the power of defending its rights. Such are the means, sire, which have been exerted to extinguish the municipal spirit in France; and to stifle, if possible, the opinions of the citizens. The nation may be said to lie under an interdict, and to be in wardship under guardians."
What could be said more to the purpose at the present day, when the revolution has achieved what are called its victories in centralization?
In 1789, Jefferson wrote from Paris to one of his friends: "There is no country where the mania for over-governing has taken deeper root than in France, or been the source of greater mischief." Letter to Madison, 28th August, 1789.
The fact is that for several centuries past the central power of France has done everything it could to extend central administration; it has acknowledged no other limits than its own strength. The central power to which the revolution gave birth made more rapid advances than any of its predecessors, because it was stronger and wiser than they had been; Louis XIV. committed the welfare of such communities to the caprice of an intendant; Napoleon left them to that of the minister. The same principle governed both, though its consequences were more or less remote.
APPENDIX L.--Page 97.
This immutability of the constitution of France is a necessary consequence of the laws of that country.
To begin with the most important of all the laws, that which decides the order of succession to the throne; what can be more immutable in its principle than a political order founded upon the natural succession of father to son? In 1814 Louis XVIII. had established the perpetual law of hereditary succession in favor of his own family. The individuals who regulated the consequences of the revolution of 1830 followed his example; they merely established the perpetuity of the law in favor of another family. In this respect they imitated the Chancellor Maurepas, who, when he erected the new parliament upon the ruins of the old, took care to declare in the same ordinance that the rights of the new magistrates should be as inalienable as those of their predecessors had been.