All these constitutions are formed on the same model, and the same designs are manifest in them all. The figure of Louis XI., which they reveal to us, is rather different from the one which we are familiar with. We are accustomed to consider him as the enemy of the nobility, but at the same time as the sincere though somewhat stern friend of the people. Here, however, he shows the same hatred towards the political rights of the people and of the nobility. He makes use of the middle classes to pull down those above them, and to keep down those below: he is equally anti-aristocratic and anti-democratic; he is essentially the citizen-king. He heaps privileges upon the principal persons of the towns, whose importance he desires to increase; he profusely confers nobility on them, thus lowering its value, and at the same time he destroys the whole popular and democratic character of the administration of the towns, and restricts the government of them to a small number of families attached to his reforms, and bound to his authority by immense advantages. Note (XIX.)--Page 37, line 30. ADMINISTRATION OF A TOWN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. I extract from the inquiry made in 1764 into the administration of towns, the document relating to Angers; in it we shall find the constitution of the town analysed, attacked, and defended by turns by the Présidial, the Corporation, the Sub-delegate, and the Intendant. As the same facts were repeated in a great number of other places, this must not be looked upon merely as an individual picture. ‘_Report of the Présidial on the actual state of the Municipal Corporation of Angers, and on the Reforms to be made in it._’ ‘The corporation of Angers,’ says the Présidial, ‘never consults the inhabitants generally, even on the most important subjects, except in cases in which it is obliged by special orders to do so. This system of administration is, therefore, unknown to all those who do not belong to the corporation, even to the échevins amovibles, who have but a very superficial idea of it.’ (The tendency of all these small civic oligarchies was, indeed, to consult what are here called the inhabitants generally as little as possible.) The corporation was composed, according to an arrêt de règlement of 29th March, 1681, of twenty-one officers:-- A mayor, who becomes noble, and whose functions continue for four years. Four échevins amovibles, who remain in office two years. Twelve échevins conseillers, who, when once elected, remain for life. Two procureurs de ville. One procureur in reversion. One greffier.