rebellious colonists as early as 1751. The Republic had succeeded in retaining only some of the maritime places; and three of these had been occupied by the French in 1756, but without hostilely interfering between the contending parties, and only in their quality of mediators. The occupation, however, was abandoned at the end of two years; till in 1764, the Genoese having experienced the difficulty, not only of subduing the rebels, but even of retaining the places which they held, besought the French to return; and by the Treaty of Compiègne put into their hands for a term of four years Ajaccio, Calvi, Bastia, and San Fiorenzo. The Corsicans made a fruitless attempt to induce France to recognise their independence by offering the same tribute which they had been accustomed to pay to the Genoese. It may be mentioned, as illustrating the degree to which the philosophical notions then prevalent had affected the minds even of practical men, that Colonel Buttafuoco, the Corsican agent, was instructed to request the groundwork of a constitution from the pen of J. J. Rousseau, and to invite that philosopher to Corsica in the name of Paoli's government. The French Court behaved disloyally both towards their allies the Genoese and to the Corsicans. The latter were deceived with false hopes; while during a four years' occupancy a debt was contracted which the Republic of Genoa was unable to discharge. The Genoese, too proud to recognise the independence of their rebellious subjects, made over Corsica to France for a sum of two million francs, by the Treaty of Versailles, May 15th 1768. The Corsicans, however, resolved to defend themselves, and it was not till the following year that they were subdued by superior forces. They were now placed under the government of France, but it was not till several years had expired that the island was entirely tranquillised. These proceedings excited great indignation in England. General Paoli and many of his companions fled their country. Paoli came to England, where he was fêted and caressed; but the English Government did nothing for Corsica, and ultimately acquiesced in its subjection.2 Among the causes of Choiseul's fall was the part which he had taken against the Duke d'Aiguillon. That nobleman had been accused of maladministration in his office of Governor of Brittany, and a process had been instituted against him in the Parliament of Rennes. The King evoked the suit before the Parliament of Paris; and finding that body inimical to his favourite, he annulled 2 See Klose, Leben Pascal Paolis. Anecdotes of Paoli's residence in England will be found in Boswell's Life of Johnson. He died in London, February 5th 1807, and was buried at St. Pancras, 510 REFORM OF MAUPEOU. [BOOK VI. their proceedings in a Lit de Justice, and published an edict (November 27th) infringing the privileges of the parliament. That body replied by tendering their resignation, and refused to resume their judicial functions, though commanded to do so by the King, till the obnoxious edict should be withdrawn. The Court solved the question by a coup d'état. On the night of January 19th 1771, the members of the parliament were awakened in their beds by the royal musquetaires, with a summons from the King to declare yes or no, whether they would resume their functions. All but thirty or forty refused. Even these, having retracted in a meeting of the 21st, were sent into exile, as their refractory comrades had been before, and the Council of State was charged with the provisional administration of justice. These proceedings were followed by others still more arbitrary and illegal. The parliaments throughout the kingdom were entirely suppressed, and in their place six Superior Councils (conseils supérieurs), with power to pronounce judgment without appeal, except in a few cases, both in civil and criminal causes, were erected in the towns of Arrâs, Blois, Châlons, Clermont-Ferraud, Lyon, and Poitiers. For the Parliament of Paris was substituted a body of seventy-five persons nominated by the King, whose places, therefore, were neither purchased nor hereditary as formerly, and who were forbidden to take presents (épices) from suitors. This body was nicknamed after its contriver the Parlement Maupeou. All this was done under the colour of reform and intellectual progress, effected in those days by the most arbitrary sovereigns. Louis XV. was to figure as a liberal with Frederick II. of Prussia, Catherine II. of Russia, and Joseph II. of Austria. The preamble of Maupeou's Edict abolishing the Parliaments, developed ideas that were designed to attract the philosophers. It really succeeded in catching some of the Encyclopædists, and among them their chief and patriarch, Voltaire himself. Nor can it be denied that some of the alleged motives were sufficiently specious. Thus Maupeou took credit for abolishing the venality of offices, which often prevented the admission of persons into the magistracy who were most worthy of it; and for rendering the administration of justice both prompt and gratuitous, through the suppression of the judges' fees, and by relieving provincial suitors from the necessity of repairing to Paris, through the establishment of the conseils supérieurs.3 Nor, if we regard the political functions assumed by the Parliament of Paris, was there much to regret in its fall. Martin, Hist. de France, t. xvi. p. 284. Never, surely, was a political machine invented of so much pretension and so little power. A royal Edict was of no avail till sanctioned and registered by the Parliament; yet if this sanction was withheld, the King had only to hold a Lit de Justice, and enforce compliance. A body so constituted, and composed principally of one class in the state, could never hope to be a constitutional power; and, accordingly, its resistance to the royal will, though sometimes productive of serious disturbance, always ended in defeat. Nevertheless, the abolition of the Parliaments was unpopular with the great majority of the French nation. In the first place, the ministry from which these reforms proceeded was not only suspected, but despised. The Parliaments, again, despite the vices of their constitution, were really popular. They were the only exponents of the national voice; and in general the members, whose dignity and independence were secured by their places, though purchased, being hereditary, had shown themselves the friends of liberty and progress. The people recollected that it was they who had opposed the feudalism and ultramontanism of the middle ages, and that to them alone they could now look for any barrier against regal despotism. These sentiments were shared by many of the very highest rank. Out of twenty-nine peers present, eleven had opposed the registry of the Edicts against the Parliaments; and what seemed still more serious, all the princes of the blood royal, except one, had protested against the proceedings of the Court, and even denied the King's power to issue such an Edict as that of November 27th. The advocate-general Séguier, had warned the King to his face, while holding the Lit de Justice, against the course he was pursuing, and bade him remember that even in the greatest monarchies, disregard of the laws had often been the cause or the pretext of revolutions. This blow against the State had been preceded a few years before by one against the Church. Choiseul, in conjunction with Madame de Pompadour, had effected the expulsion of the Jesuits from France; and it has been thought that the fall of that minister was hastened by the revenge and intrigues of the disciples of Loyola. The fall of the Jesuits concerns the general history of Europe, and we have therefore abstained from touching on it, till it could be narrated in its totality. The movement against the Jesuits, as we have already said, originated in Portugal, and was the work of Pombal. To the influence of the Jesuits it was ascribed that the weak and superstitious See above, Ch. VI. p. 436. 512 SUPERSTITION OF JOHN V. OF PORTUGAL. [Book VI. John V. had annihilated all hope of progress, by throwing his kingdom entirely into the hands of the clergy; and this circumstance is the best justification of Pombal's harsh and arbitrary proceedings against the order. Amidst the enlightenment of the 18th century, the conduct of John might have befitted the most benighted period of the dark ages. Among other instances of his extravagance, may be mentioned the foundation of the royal convent of Mafra, at an expense of forty-five million crusades, or near four million sterling. In one wing of this building, 300 lazy Franciscans were lodged in regal splendour; their church occupied the centre, and the other wing formed the king's palace! John founded a patriarchate in Lisbon, and towards the end of 1741, caused at least a hundred houses to be pulled down in that city, in order to build a patriarchal church and palace. In 1744, after recovering from an attack of sickness, he summoned to his court four and twenty prebendaries, whom he had instituted, gave all a cap, violet stockings, red shoes, a golden hat-band, and a cardinal's staff; conferred upon them ducal rank, with an income of 2000 crusades apiece, and on the following day enjoyed the spectacle of seeing them perform divine service in their new attire. The civil government was also under ecclesiastical control, and promulgated the strangest regulations. Thus, for instance, the importation of costly manufactures in gold, silver, silk, fine stuffs, &c., was suddenly prohibited, except such as were to be used by the clergy, and in the churches. The liberty to display his whims and caprices in church matters was bought by John at a high price from the Court of Rome, and no country was more profitable to the Papal Court than the little kingdom of Portugal. Hence he earned from Pope Benedict XIV. the equivocal title of Fidelissimus, which might signify his excessive devotion either to the Holy See, or to Christ. In these and the like circumstances, there was enough to excite the bile of a less fiery reformer than Pombal. That minister regarded the Church, and especially the Jesuits, as the chief authors of the declining state of the kingdom; and he had been further incensed against that order by their conduct in Paraguay. Through the influence of John V.'s daughter, Barbara, who had married Ferdinand VI. of Spain, a settlement had been effected, in 1750, of the long disputes respecting the colony of San Sacramento on the river Plata, which had been assigned to Portugal by the Treaty of Utrecht." Portugal abandoned that colony to There were further quarrels between the possession of which was confirmed to Spain and Portugal respecting this colony, Portugal by the Peace of Paris in 1763. Spain, receiving in return the town and district of Tuy, in Galicia, and the Seven Missions of Paraguay. The native Indians of this district were to be transferred to Spanish soil; but their rulers, the Jesuits, incited them to oppose this arrangement, and for some time they succeeded in resisting the 3000 or 4000 Spaniards and Portuguese, under the command of the commissaries appointed to effect the exchange. Pombal despatched his brother, with a considerable army in 1753, to put an end to the dominion of the Jesuits; which, however, was not effected till 1756. Meanwhile, the great earthquake of Lisbon had taken place. The Jesuits did not let slip so favourable an opportunity for working on the superstition of the people. Pombal was denounced from the pulpits, and the earthquake was appealed to as the visible judgment of God upon his profanity. The Portuguese minister was not a man to be daunted by such attacks. He resolved on the destruction of the Jesuits. His first victim was Malagrida, apparently a harmless fanatic, if fanaticism. ever can be harmless. Gabriel Malagrida, the inventor of certain mechanical spiritual exercises which he alone could conduct, had obtained the odour of sanctity by setting afloat, through the efficacy of his prayers, a ship that had been stranded; but, regardless of these merits, the minister banished Saint Gabriel to Setubal. This step was followed up by a seizure of all the Jesuits at Court (September 1757), and the publication of a Manifesto against them which created a great sensation in Europe. The principal charge alleged against them in this document was their conduct with regard to the Indians of Paraguay. In the following year Pombal denounced them to Pope Benedict XIV. as violating the laws of their order by illicit traffic and plots against the Government; he forbade them to engage in commerce, and finally even to preach and confess. The answer of the Papal See to this application was deferred by the death of Benedict (May 1758); but soon after the attempt on the life of King Joseph, already related, afforded Pombal a pretext to root out the order. They were accused of being privy to that Spain, however, once more seized it in 1777, and it was ceded to that Power by the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, Oct. 1st, afterwards confirmed by the Treaty of the Pardo, March 1st 1778. These arrangements were facilitated by the death of Joseph I. of Portugal, in Feb. 1777. He was succeeded by his daughter, Maria Francisca, whose connection with the Spanish House rendered the Treaty of the Pardo a sort of family compact. Pombal had endeavoured to set aside Maria Fran VOL. III. L L cisca, by abolishing the decrees of the Cortès, which established the female succession, and transferring the crown to Joseph, grandson of the reigning monarch, who gave his consent to the arrangement. But Charles III. announced his resolution of supporting his niece's rights with his whole force, and the design against her was abandoned. On the accession of Maria Francisca, Pombal was dismissed. Coxe, Span. Bourbons, ch. lxix. For the treaties, Marten's Recueil, t. i. pp. 634, 709. |