Again, only a year before the Revolution, one royal decree transformed the administration of justice in France; while a year earlier, in 1787, another bold and memorable measure completed the reform begun as an experiment some years before, and established provincial assemblies in all the Pays d'Élection. The importance of this step, which has been sometimes overlooked among the graver changes of a later day, can hardly be exaggerated; for it introduced, almost without warning, a new principle into the government of the country. By the side of the autocratic Intendants, new provincial assemblies were created, which stripped the Intendants of most of their powers, or, if they resisted, entered into active competition with them. By the side of the autocratic Sub-Delegates, new district assemblies were formed, to pursue a similar course of action in a smaller sphere. In place of the ancient parochial assemblies, and in the midst of the inequalities and privileges, of which French villages were the familiar scene, and which in themselves remained unaltered, new, elective, municipal bodies sprang up to assert democratic methods, among conditions wholly irreconcilable with democratic ideas. When one considers the scope of these important changes, their novelty, their inconsistencies, and the suddenness with which they were made, one realises something of the confusion and paralysis which they must have produced in the public service, and one begins to understand why the agents of the Government proved so powerless, in spite of their prestige, when they had to face the crisis in 1789. On the very eve of the Revolution, Louis and his advisers, forgetful of the salutary maxim that the most dangerous moment for a bad Government is the moment when it meddles with reform, had deliberately destroyed the old, despotic, administrative system, which, at the end of the eighteenth century, formed the only certain mainstay of the throne.