r resignation in a body. Five of its
members were arrested; at their head was the attorney-general, M. de la
Chalotais, author of a very remarkable paper against the Jesuits. It was
necessary to form at St. Malo a King's Chamber to try the accused. M. de
Calonne, an ambitious young man, the declared foe of M. de la Chalotais,
was appointed attorney-general on the commission. He pretended to have
discovered grave facts against the accused; he was suspected of having
invented them. Public feeling was at its height; the magistrates loudly
proclaimed the theory of Classes, according to which all the Parliaments
of France, responsible one for another, formed in reality but one body,
distributed by delegation throughout the principal towns of the realm.
The king convoked a bed of justice, and, on the 2d of March, 1766, he
repaired to the Parliament of Paris. "What has passed in my Parliaments
of Pau and of Rennes has nothing to do with my other Parliaments," said
Louis XV. in a firm tone, to which the ears of the Parliament were no
longer accustomed. "I have behaved in respect of those two courts as
comported with my authority, and I am not bound to account to anybody. I
will not permit the formation in my kingdom of an association which might
reduce to a confederacy of opposition the natural bond of identical
duties and common obligations, nor the introduction into the monarchy of
an imaginary body which could not but disturb its harmony. The
magistracy does not form a body or order separate from the three orders
of the kingdom; the magistrates are my officers. In my person alone
resides the sovereign power, of which the special characteristic is the
spirit of counsel, justice, and reason; it is from me alone that my
courts have their existence and authority. It is to me alone that the
legislative power belongs, without dependence and without partition. My
people is but one with me, and the rights and interests of the nation
whereof men dare to make a body separate from the monarch are necessarily
united with my own, and rest only in my hands."

This haughty affirmation of absolute power, a faithful echo of Cardinal
Richelieu's grand doctrines, succeeded for a while in silencing the
representations of the Parliaments; but it could not modify the course of
opinion, passionately excited in favor of M. de la Chalotais. On the
24th of December, 1766, after having thrice changed the jurisdiction and
the judges, the ki