in Notre-Dame. This meeting constituted the first convention of the States-general. In 1355 the three estates deliberated together again, and in 1484 the States-general was convoked, in order to ensure a National representation. In Languedoc, Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany, and other provinces, or pays d'états, the estates retained their ancient Constitutions.
Subsequently the parliaments, which possessed legislative, political, and administrative, as well as judicial power, were a further check upon the prerogative of the King. The parliaments of Paris and the provincial parliaments displayed a spirit of independence until they were abolished by Louis XV. Many of these tribunals had already been overcome by Richelieu and Louis XIV.
It has been assumed by some publicists that France had a Constitution prior to 1789. The institutions referred to by these writers were largely subject to the relative cruelty or goodness of kings, of ministers, of bishops, and of lords; a mixture of old laws and barbarous customs. Maxims of public law and precepts of private rights marched side by side in the confusion. The contradictory systems with which the earlier part of the eighteenth century was filled, precluded the diffusion of reform principles, responding to the great social needs of that time, and, when placed in the light of the Revolution, became the point of departure of the modern law.
Many extravagant estimates of the number of Constitutions under which the French people have lived since 1789 have been made. This number will be materially reduced when it is remembered that the Constitution of 1793 was suppressed a short time after its adoption, by the revolutionary government; that of 1815 never went into practical operation; that of 1830 was only the charter of 1814, with slight amendments; that of 1852 was
