en is to be
followed in preference to that of the Parliament of Paris, and of the
other parliaments of the kingdom which judge differently.

"Although by the ordinances of the Kings your predecessors, Parliaments
have been forbidden to pay any attention to lettres de cachet; we,
nevertheless, from the knowledge which we have, in common with the
whole kingdom, of the care bestowed by your Majesty for the good of
your subjects, and from the submission and obedience to your
commandments which we have always manifested, have stayed all
proceedings, in conformity to your orders; hoping that your Majesty,
considering the importance of the crime of witchcraft, and the
consequences likely to ensue from its impunity, will be graciously
pleased to grant us once more your permission to continue the trials,
and execute judgment upon those found guilty. And as, since we received
the letter of your Secretary of State, we have also been made
acquainted with the determination of your Majesty, not only to commute
the sentence of death passed upon these witches into one of perpetual
banishment from the province, but to re-establish them in the
possession of their goods and chattels, and of their good fame and
character, your Parliament have thought it their duty, on occasion of
these crimes, the greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted
with the general and uniform feelings of the people of this province
with regard to them; it being, moreover, a question in which are
concerned the glory of God and the relief of your suffering subjects,
who groan under their fears from the threats and menaces of this sort
of persons, and who feel the effects of them every day in the mortal
and extraordinary maladies which attack them, and the surprising damage
and loss of their possessions.

"Your Majesty knows well that there is no crime so opposed to the
commands of God as witchcraft, which destroys the very foundation of
religion, and draws strange abominations after it. It is for this
reason, Sire, that the Scriptures pronounce the punishment of death
against offenders, and that the church and the holy fathers have
fulminated their anathemas, and that canonical decisions have one and
all decreed the most severe punishments, to deter from this crime; and
that the Church of France, animated by the piety of the Kings your
predecessors, has expressed so great a horror at it, that, not judging
the punishment of perpetual imprisonment, the hi