rincipal members were
shut up in different prisons. About the same time a deputation of
persons arrived from the province of Brittany to remonstrate against the
establishment of the Cour Pleniere, and those the archbishop sent to the
Bastille. But the spirit of the nation was not to be overcome, and
it was so fully sensible of the strong ground it had taken--that of
withholding taxes--that it contented itself with keeping up a sort of
quiet resistance, which effectually overthrew all the plans at that time
formed against it. The project of the Cour Pleniere was at last obliged
to be given up, and the Prime Minister not long afterwards followed its
fate, and M. Neckar was recalled into office.

The attempt to establish the Cour Pleniere had an effect upon the nation
which itself did not perceive. It was a sort of new form of government
that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge
it from the superstitious authority of antiquity. It was Government
dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one,
made a chasm.

The failure of this scheme renewed the subject of convening the
State-General; and this gave rise to a new series of politics. There was
no settled form for convening the States-General: all that it positively
meant was a deputation from what was then called the Clergy, the
Noblesse, and the Commons; but their numbers or their proportions had
not been always the same. They had been convened only on extraordinary
occasions, the last of which was in 1614; their numbers were then in
equal proportions, and they voted by orders.

It could not well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of
1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the
nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been
too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been
endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of
the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would
have been attended to. But as he did not choose to take the decision
upon himself, he summoned again the Assembly of the Notables and
referred it to them. This body was in general interested in the
decision, being chiefly of aristocracy and high-paid clergy, and they
decided in favor of the mode of 1614. This decision was against the
sense of the Nation, and also against the wishes of the Court; for
the aristocracy opposed itself to b