They and their courts lived at Versailles, given up to ambition, display, or vice. Paris and the Parisians existed to produce fine things, to give splendour to the monarchy, society to the nobility, fat benefices to the church. The meanest fraternity of friars, the most scandalous abbe, the most rapacious courtier, was of more account than the corporate officials of Paris. Vested interests, sacred foundations, privileged rights, blocked every path to reform and progress. The king's palaces, the king's fortresses, the king's institutions were inviolable, sacred, immutable. An obsolete foundation of bygone superstition was the cause of God. And the caprice of a great noble was a high matter of state.
Old Paris consisted of dark and crooked lanes, because in the Middle Ages cities were so built. To build new streets, to plan fresh thoroughfares, would disturb some church, destroy some oratory, inconvenience some marquis, or displace some convent. To pave streets, to make sewers, to open spaces, to remove cemeteries, to supply pure water, and to obtain fresh air would cost money, would affect privileges, or invade some right. But the money of Parisians was required to pay the king's dues, not to improve Paris. All privileges were above the law, and as sacred as the Ark of the Covenant. ' Rights,' in the sense of privileges, came before law, before necessity private turkey tours, before humanity, decency, or public duty.
Public convenience
The sains populi was the infima lex—the lowest and last consideration which authority recognised. Prescription and the will of an absolute despot — these were the sole standards of public convenience. And the result was that they made permanent and astounding accretions of public inconvenience. Something was done by Louis xiv. to add magnificence to the capital by some royal palaces, churches, and boulevards; and early in the reign of Louis xv. the spirit of social improvement, which culminated in the States-General of 1789, began to make itself felt. A few improvements were made, new streets were built on the outskirts, the cemeteries were closed, and the water supply was reformed. From the middle of the century a series of efforts were made, and not the least by Turgot and by his father, the Provost. But before privilege and prerogative the best efforts failed. It needed a revolution to reform the city of Paris. And the Revolution not only reformed, but transformed it with a vengeance.
The physical disorder of old Paris was merely the reflection— indeed, but a pale reflection'—of the social, political, moral disorder of the Old Regime. The organisation of the city was a chaos of competing authorities, a tangle of obsolete privileges, and a nest of scandalous abuses. Anomalous courts jostled and scrambled for jurisdiction; ancient gilds and corporations blocked every reform; atrocious injustice and inveterate corruption reigned high-handed in the name of king, noble, or church. A valuable work of great research appeared (June 1889), under the direction of an important commission of historians, which throws new light from public documents on the condition of Paris under the old system.1 We may see in it an astounding picture of misrule. The Parlement, the Hotel de Ville, the Chatelet, the Governor of Paris, the Governor of the Bastille, the Minister of Paris, the University, the trade-gilds, the church, the religious foundations, all claim privileges, jurisdictions, rights, immunities, which cross and re-cross each other in continual conflict.
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