Political Science Of The State

362 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
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were set up. The jurisdiction of this latter court embraced,
in 1453, cases touching the royal domains, the regalia and
high criminal justice ; the suits of the peers of France touch-
ing the lands held by them as peers and their apanages;
those of prelates, chapters, counts, barons, towns and their
echemns, and of other communities and high personages, who
were allowed by privilege or usage to have this for their regu-
lar court. These with appeal-cases from all parts of the
kingdom, unless where a grandee had received a special privi-
lege de non appellando, formed the principal business. After
the foundation of other parliaments this competence of the
parliament of Paris was restricted.
A special function of this court gave it a certain political
bearing. We refer to the registration of the royal ordinances,
and the right by usage which the parliament acquired of re-
fusing their assent to such registration. This right grew out
of the practice in early times of making known the ordinances
at the meeting of the curia regis where they would naturally
be known and even published, as the baillis and seneschals si
the various districts where they were binding would be there
assembled. In process of time the parliament or judicial side
of the curia kept registers, and before the ordinances were
made known examined them and offered their objections
against them. From this grew up the usage, where no such
examination had taken place, for their secretary to add a
note in the-register that the parliament had not consented to
the ordinance in question ; and from this the further usage
or right to make objections against ordinances and refuse to
have them enregistered. The first case of this kind occurred,
it is said, in 1411. The kings at an early time felt that this
was an invasion of their sovereignty, but such was the pres-
tige of the supreme court that Louis XI. gave way to their
remonstrances, on an occasion when the president of the par-
liament, with the counsellors or members, appeared in their
robes before him and threatened to lay down their offices
sooner than be forced to register the edict laid before them.
Such force was practised in a session where the king was