The Eve of the French Revolution | Page 5

parties followed the decision of the majority
of the council that heard the case. Thus the ancient custom of seeking
justice from a royal judge merely served to transfer jurisdiction to an
irregular tribunal.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Secrétaires d'État_, 465.]
The executive power was both nominally and actually in the hands of
the councils. Great questions of foreign and domestic policy could be
settled only in the Council of State.[Footnote: Sometimes called
Conseil d'en haut, or Upper Council.] But the whole administration
tended more and more in the same direction. Questions of detail were
submitted from all parts of France. Hardly a bridge was built or a
steeple repaired in Burgundy or Provence without a permission signed
by the king in council and countersigned by a secretary of state. The
Council of Despatches exercised disciplinary jurisdiction over authors,
printers, and booksellers. It governed schools, and revised their rules
and regulations. It laid out roads, dredged rivers, and built canals. It
dealt with the clergy, decided differences between bishops and their
chapters, authorized dioceses and parishes to borrow money. It took

general charge of towns and municipal organization. The Council of
Finance and the Council of Commerce had equally minute questions to
decide in their own departments.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Secrétaires
d'État_, 418. For this excessive centralization, see, also, De Tocqueville,
_L'ancien Régime et la Révolution_, passim.]
Evidently the king and his ministers could not give their personal
attention to all these matters. Minor questions were in fact settled by
the bureaux and the secretaries of state, and the king did little more
than sign the necessary license. Thus matters of local interest were
practically decided by subordinate officers in Paris or Versailles,
instead of being arranged in the places where they were really
understood. If a village in Languedoc wanted a new parsonage, neither
the inhabitants of the place, nor any one who had ever been within a
hundred miles of it, was allowed to decide on the plan and to regulate
the expense, but the whole matter was reported to an office in the
capital and there settled by a clerk. This barbarous system, which is by
no means obsolete in Europe, is known in modern times by the
barbarous name of bureaucracy.
The royal councils and their subordinate bureaux had their agents in the
country. These were the intendants, men who deserve attention, for by
them a very large part of the actual government was carried on. They
were thirty-two in number, and governed each a territory, called a
généralité. The Intendants were not great lords, nor the owners of
offices that had become assimilated to property; they were
hard-working men, delegated by the council, under the great seal, and
liable to be promoted or recalled at the royal pleasure. They were
chosen from the class of _maîtres des requêtes_, and were therefore all
lawyers and members of the Privy Council. Thus the unity of the
administration in Versailles and the provinces was constantly
maintained.
It had originally been the function of the intendants to act as legal
inspectors, making the circuit of the provincial towns for the purpose of
securing uniformity and the proper administration of justice in the
various local courts.[Footnote: Du Boys, i. 517.] They retained to the

end of the monarchy the privilege of sitting in all the courts of law
within their districts.[Footnote: De Lucay, _Les Assemblées
provinciales_, 31.] But their duties and powers had grown to be far
greater than those of any officer merely judicial. The intendant had
charge of the interests of the Catholic religion and worship, and the
care of buildings devoted to religious purposes. He also controlled the
Protestants, and all their affairs. He encouraged and regulated
agriculture and commerce. He settled many questions concerning
military matters and garrisons. The militia was entirely managed by
him. He cooperated with the courts of justice in the control of the
police. He had charge of post-roads and post-offices, stage coaches,
books and printing, royal or privileged lotteries, and the suppression of
illegal gambling. He was, in fact, the direct representative of the royal
power, and was in constant correspondence with the king's minister of
state. And as the power of the crown had constantly grown for two
centuries, so the power of the intendant had constantly grown with it,
tending to the centralization and unity of France and to the destruction
of local liberties.
As the intendants were educated as lawyers rather than as
administrators, and as they were often transferred from one province to
another after a short term of service, they did not acquire full
knowledge of their business. Moreover, they did not reside regularly in
the part of the country which they governed, but made only flying visits
to it, and spent most of their time near the centre