governors or of the estates or of the Parlements had suffered under the centralising hand of Richelieu. In many cases they had been rooted out. France was becoming a _tabula rasa_, on which the hand of the king, or, worse still, of the minister, was alone visible. [Sidenote: =Importance of the reforms.=] So the Parlement de Paris felt, when it embarked on the struggle with the Crown, that it had behind it not merely the turbulence of a great city, or the bastard enthusiasm produced by professional agitators, but also a mass of thoughtful public opinion, traditions which lay deep in French history, and the political instincts of a growing nation. The example of England was sufficient to show that if it could, by whatever machinery, put an effectual check on the power of arbitrary taxation and the power of arbitrary imprisonment enjoyed by the government, it would have planted a seed from which the tree of liberty would assuredly spring. Of the four chief points of the charter of reform wrung from the Crown in October 1648, two, the reduction of the _taille_ and the abolition of the Intendants, were merely passing remedies for special grievances of the time; the other two, the control over taxation and the Habeas Corpus, enunciated principles of government for the future, which if they could have been enforced, would have infallibly altered the whole history of France. [Sidenote: =Weakness of the Parlement.=] Unfortunately the Parlement itself was a body wholly unfit to lead a constitutional struggle. A close corporation of magistrates without representative character, without legislative or political rights, without traditions to which to appeal, without force on which to rely, was ludicrously unfit to stand forth as the champion of national interests against a Crown, which at that very moment had assumed the headship of European politics. Its ally the city of Paris was more unfit still. The close-fisted _bourgeoisie_, anxious for its privileges, and trembling for its money-bags, the turbulent populace of the streets intoxicated with its own importance, a small knot of interested agitators like Gondi, a larger body of selfish aristocrats and frivolous women, half fools, half knaves, like the duke of Beaufort and the duchesse de Longueville, were not the stuff of which successful constitutional revolutions are made. As a natural result the movement began at once to deteriorate. Hatred of Mazarin was a common factor between the constitutionalists of the Parlement, the populace of the streets, and princes of the blood-royal and the nobility. [Sidenote: =The lead taken by the nobility and the populace.=] To gain the support necessary to meet the forces of the Crown, the Parlement had to rely on the city and to appeal to the nobles. The latter eagerly joined the movement in order to recover their old political influence and to oust the hated minister. They cared not a sou for the Parlement. In