The _Avocats au parlement_ had nothing to do with state-affairs, being very little more than barristers in the highest court of justice; and the highest claim of the Presidents of this court was to be a sort of humble counsellors to the King in common matters. It was a very strange inconsistency in that ingenious nation to permit such people to touch on those state-subjects; for, in fact, the King of France was an absolute Monarch, and the subjects were slaves. This is the result of all their painful research, notwithstanding that glimmerings of natural justice and of freedom are to be met with in their records. There could not be found in their history so much as a tolerable account of the manner of calling the nation together, to learn from the people how their chains would best please their fancy. But all this was against nature, and it was necessary that it should come to an end, the first time that the monarch confessed that he could not do every thing unless they put the tools into his hands. As things were approaching gradually but rapidly to this condition, the impertinent interference (for so a Frenchman, subject of the Grand Monarch, _must_ think it) of the advocates of the Parliament of Paris was popular in the highest degree; and it must be confessed, that in general it was patriotic, however inconsistent with the constitution. They felt themselves pleading the cause of humanity and natural justice. This would embolden honest and worthy men to speak truth, however unwelcome to the court. In general, it must also be granted that they spoke with caution and with respect to the sovereign powers; and they had frequently the pleasure of being the means of mitigating the burdens of the people. The Parliament of Paris, by this conduct, came to be looked up to as a sort of mediator between the King and his subjects; and as the avocats saw this, they naturally rose in their own estimation far above the rank in which the constitution of their government had placed them. For it must always be kept in mind, that the robe was never considered as the dress of a Nobleman, although the cassock was. An advocate was merely not a rotourier; and though we can hardly conceive a profession more truly honourable than the dispensing of distributive justice, nor any skill more congenial to a rational mind than that of the practical morality which we, in theory, consider as the light by which they are always conducted; and although even the artificial constitution of France had long been obliged to bow to the dictates of nature and humanity, and confer nobility, and even title, on such of the professors of the municipal law as had, by their skill and their honourable character, risen to the first offices of their profession, yet the Noblesse de la Robe never could incorporate with the Noblesse du Sang, nor even with the Noblesse de l'Epee. The descendants of a Marquis de la Robe never could rise to certain dignities in the church and at court.