revived the pretensions of the Parliament.  The queen’s description of the rise of a French opposition at once received a practical commentary.  The debates in the Parliament became warmer than they had ever been since the days of the Fronde:  the citizens, sharing in the excitement, thronged the palace of the Parliament, expressing their approval or disapproval of the different speakers by disorderly and unprecedented clamor; the great majority hooting down the minister and his supporters, and cheering those who spoke against him.  The Duc d’Orleans, by open bribes, gained over many of the councilors to oppose the court in every thing.  The registration of several of the edicts which the minister had sent down was refused; and one member of the Orleanist party even demanded the convocation of the States-general, formerly and constitutionally the great council of the nation, but which had never been assembled since the time of Richelieu.

The archbishop was sometimes angry, and sometimes terrified, and as weak in his anger as in his terror.  He persuaded the king to hold a bed of justice to compel the registration of the edicts.  When the Parliament protested, he banished it to Troyes.  In less than a month he became alarmed at his own vigor, and recalled it.  Encouraged by his pusillanimity, and more secure than ever of the support of the citizens who had been thrown into consternation by his demand of a second loan, nearly[12] six times as large as the first, it became more audacious and defiant than ever, D’Orleans openly placing himself at the head of the malcontents.  Lomenie persuaded the king to banish the duke, and to arrest one or two of his most vehement partisans; and again in a few weeks repented of this act of decision also, released the prisoners, and recalled the duke.

As a matter of course, the Parliament grew bolder still.  Every measure which the minister proposed was rejected; and under the guidance of one of their members, Duval d’Espremesnil, the councilors at last proceeded so far as to take the initiative in new legislation into their own hands.  In the first week in May, 1788, they passed a series of resolutions affirming that to be the law which indeed ought to have been so, but which had certainly never been regarded as such at any period of French history.  One declared that magistrates were irremovable, except in cases of misconduct; another, that the individual liberty and property of every citizen were inviolable; others insisted on the necessity of convoking the States-general as the only assembly entitled to impose taxes; and the councilors hoped to secure the royal acceptance of these resolutions by some previous votes which asserted that, of those laws which were the very foundation of the Constitution, the first was that which assured the “crown to the reigning house and to its descendants in the male line, in the order of primogeniture.[13]”