love that strong opposition, and those admirable remonstrances, which it sometimes meets with from the parliaments.  Many of those detached pieces are very well worth your collecting; and I remember, a year or two ago, a remonstrance of the parliament of Douay, upon the subject, as I think, of the ‘Vingtieme’, which was in my mind one of the finest and most moving compositions I ever read.  They owned themselves, indeed, to be slaves, and showed their chains:  but humbly begged of his Majesty to make them a little lighter, and less galling.

The states of France were general assemblies of the three states or orders of the kingdom; the Clergy, the Nobility, and the ‘Tiers Etat’, that is, the people.  They used to be called together by the King, upon the most important affairs of state, like our Lords and Commons in parliament, and our Clergy in convocation.  Our parliament is our states, and the French parliaments are only their courts of justice.  The Nobility consisted of all those of noble extraction, whether belonging to the Sword or to the robe, excepting such as were chosen (which sometimes happened) by the Tiers Etat as their deputies to the States-General.  The Tiers Etat was exactly our House of Commons, that is, the people, represented by deputies of their own choosing.  Those who had the most considerable places, ‘dans la robe’, assisted at those assemblies, as commissioners on the part of the Crown.  The States met, for the first time that I can find (I mean by the name of ’les etats’), in the reign of Pharamond, 424, when they confirmed the Salic law.  From that time they have been very frequently assembled, sometimes upon important occasions, as making war and peace, reforming abuses, etc.; at other times, upon seemingly trifling ones, as coronations, marriages, etc.  Francis the First assembled them, in 1526, to declare null and void his famous treaty of Madrid, signed and sworn to by him during his captivity there.  They grew troublesome to the kings and to their ministers, and were but seldom called after the power of the Crown grew strong; and they have never been heard of since the year 1615.  Richelieu came and shackled the nation, and Mazarin and Lewis the Fourteenth riveted the shackles.

There still subsist in some provinces in France, which are called ’pais d etats’, an humble local imitation, or rather mimicry, of the great ‘etats’, as in Languedoc, Bretagne, etc.  They meet, they speak, they grumble, and finally submit to whatever the King orders.

Independently of the intrinsic utility of this kind of knowledge to every man of business, it is a shame for any man to be ignorant of it, especially relatively to any country he has been long in.  Adieu.

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