I would have no other answer to give to the numerous remonstrances made to me on this subject, if their combination, the impropriety of their style, the rashness of the most erroneous principles, and the pretension of the new expressions which characterize them had not revealed the pernicious consequences of that idea of unity which I have already prohibited, and which people wish to establish as a principle at the same moment in which they dare to put it into practice.

I shall not tolerate in my kingdom the formation of an association which would cause the natural bond of similar duties and common responsibilities to degenerate into a confederation for resistance, nor the introduction into the monarchy of an imaginary body which could only upset its harmony; the magistracy does not form a body, nor a separate order in the three orders of the kingdom; the magistrates are my officers, responsible for carrying out my truly royal duty of rendering justice to my subjects, a function which attaches them to my person and which will always render them praiseworthy in my eyes. I recognize the importance of their services; it is an illusion, which can only tend to shake confidence by a series of false alarms, to imagine that a plan has been drawn up to annihilate the magistracy, or to claim that it has enemies close to the throne; its real, its only enemies are those within it who persuade it to speak a language opposed to its principles; who lead it to claim that all the parlements together are but one and the same body, distributed in several classes; that this body, necessarily indivisible, is the essence and basis of the monarchy; that it is the seat, the tribunal, the spokesman of the nation; that it is the protector and the essential depositary of the nation's liberties, interests, and rights; that it is responsible to the nation for this trust and that it would be criminal to abandon it; that it is responsible, in all concerns of the public welfare, not only to the king, but also to the nation; that it is a judge between the king and his people; that as a reciprocal guardian, it maintains the balance of government, repressing equally the excesses of liberty and the abuses of authority; that the parlements co-operate with the sovereign power in the establishment of laws; that they can sometimes on their own authority free themselves from a registered law and legally regard it as nonexistent; that they must oppose an insurmountable barrier to decisions which they attribute to arbitrary authority, and which they call illegal acts, as well as to orders which they claim to be surprises, and that, if a conflict of authority arises, it is their duty to abandon their functions and to resign from their offices, even if their resignations are not accepted. To try to make principles of such pernicious novelties is to injure the magistracy, to deny its institutional position, to betray its interests and to disregard the fundamental laws of the state; as if anyone could forget that the sovereign power resides in my person only, that sovereign power of which the natural characteristics are the spirit of consultation, justice, and reason; that my courts derive their existence and their authority from me alone; that the plenitude of that authority, which they only exercise in my name, always remains with me, and that it can never be employed against me; that to me alone belongs legislative power without subordination and undivided; that it is by my authority alone that the officers of my courts proceed, not to the formation, but to the registration, the publication, the execution of the law, and that it is permitted for them to remonstrate only within the limits of duty of good and useful councilors; that public order in its entirety emanates from me, and that the rights and interests of the nation, which some dare to regard as a separate body from the monarch, are necessarily united with my rights and interests, and repose only in my hands.

I am convinced that the officers of my courts will never lose sight of these sacred and immutable maxims, which are engraved on the hearts of all faithful subjects, and that they will disavow these extraneous ideas, that spirit of independence and these errors, the consequences of which they could not envisage without terror.

Remonstrances will always be received favorably when they reflect only the moderation proper to the magistrate and to truth, when their secrecy keeps them decent and useful, and when this method [of remonstrance] so wisely established is not made a travesty of libelous utterances, in which submission to my will is presented as a crime and the accomplishment of the duties I have ordered as a subject for the condemnation; in which it is supposed that the whole nation is groaning at seeing its rights, its liberty, its security on the point of perishing under a terrible power, and in which it is announced that the bonds of obedience may soon be broken; but if, after I have examined there remonstrances, and, knowing the case, I have maintained my will, my courts should persevere in their refusal to submit, and, instead of registering at the very express command of the king (an expression chosen to reflect the duty of obedience) if they undertook to annul on their own authority laws solemnly registered, and if, finally, when my authority has been compelled to be employed to its full extent, they dared still in some fashion to battle against it, by decrees of prohibition, by suspensive (sic) opposition or by irregular methods such as ceasing their service or resigning, then confusion and anarchy would take the place of legitimate order, and the scandalous spectacle of an open contradiction to my sovereign power would reduce me to the unhappy necessity of using all the power which I have received from God in order to preserve my peoples from the terrible consequences of such enterprises.