It was generally before the Intendant or before the Provost of the Maréchaussée that all the lower order of people were sent for trial, by this process of evocation, when they had been guilty of public disturbances. Most of the riots so frequently caused by the high price of corn gave rise to transfers of jurisdiction of this nature. The Intendant then summoned to his court a certain number of persons, who formed a sort of local council, chosen by himself, and with their assistance he proceeded to try criminals. I have found sentences delivered in this manner, by which men were condemned to the galleys, and even to death. Criminal trials decided by the Intendant were still common at the close of the seventeenth century. Modern jurists in discussing this subject of administrative jurisdictions assert, that great progress has been made since the Revolution. ‘Before that era,’ they say, ‘the judicial and administrative powers were confounded; they have since been distinguished and assigned to their respective places.’ To appreciate correctly the progress here spoken of, it must never be forgotten, that if on the one hand the judicial power under the old monarchy was incessantly extending beyond the natural sphere of its authority, yet on the other hand that sphere was never entirely filled by it. To see one of these facts without the other is to form an incomplete and inaccurate idea of the subject. Sometimes the courts of law were allowed to enact regulations on matters of public administration, which was manifestly beyond their jurisdiction; sometimes they were restrained from judging regular suits, which was to exclude them from the exercise of their proper functions. The modern law of France has undoubtedly removed the administration of justice from those political institutions into which it had very improperly been allowed to penetrate before the Revolution; but at the same time, as has just been shown, the Government continually invaded the proper sphere of the judicial authorities, and this state of things is unchanged, as if the confusion of these powers were not equally dangerous on the one side as on the other, and even worse in the latter mode; for the intervention of a judicial authority in administrative business is only injurious to the transaction of affairs; but the intervention of administrative power in judicial proceedings depraves mankind, and tends to render men at once revolutionary and servile.