But amid the ruins of older institutions and the confusion of innumerable conflicting rights, a new system of administration had gradually grown up and had usurped all real authority in France. At its head stood the King's Council, with its centre at Versailles. The Council represented in all departments the monopoly of the State. It was a supreme court of justice, for it had power to over-rule the judgments of all ordinary courts. It was a supreme legislature, for the States-General, the ancient representative Parliament of France, had not been summoned since the early years of the seventeenth century, and the local judicial Parlements, though they could discuss the edicts of the Council, could not in the last resort resist them. It was supreme in all matters of administration and finance. It governed the country. It raised and assessed the taxes. In it one over-burdened minister, the Comptroller-General, assumed responsibility for all home affairs. Under the Council, and responsible to it alone, there was stationed in each of the thirty-two provinces or 'generalities' of the kingdom one all-powerful agent called the Intendant. The Intendant was drawn, not from the nobility, but from the professional class. He superintended the collection and apportionment of all taxes which were not farmed out by the Council to financial companies. He decided in individual cases what remissions of taxes should be allowed. He was responsible under the Council for constructing highways and for all great public works[1]. He enforced the hated duty of the militia service. He maintained order with the help of the Maréchaussée or mounted police. He carried out the police regulations of the local authorities and the more imperious and comprehensive regulations issued from time to time by the Council. He possessed in exceptional cases large judicial powers. As the ordinary judges were independent of the Crown, the Council multiplied extraordinary tribunals and reserved for their consideration all suits in which the rights of the Crown were even remotely concerned. In such cases the Intendant acted as judge both in civil and in criminal matters, and from his judgment an appeal lay to the Council alone. This practice, once established, was of course extended and often abused in the interests of power, for the principles of the ordinary courts, the Intendants confessed, could 'never be reconciled with those of the Government.'