Editing Lettres de cachet (section)

==Protests==
Protests against the ''lettres de cachet'' were made continually by the [[Parlement of Paris|''Parlement'' of Paris]] and by the provincial ''[[parlement]]s'', and also by the [[Estates General (France)|Estates-General]]. In 1648, during the [[Fronde]], the sovereign courts of Paris,{{efn|''Parlement'', ''Chambre des comptes'', ''Cour des Aides'', ''Grand Conseil'' together}} by their ''Arrêt d'Union'', procured their momentary suppression in a kind of charter of liberties which they imposed upon the crown, but which was short-lived.

It was not until the reign of [[Louis XVI]] that a reaction against the abuse became clearly perceptible. At the beginning of that reign [[Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes|Malesherbes]] during his short ministry endeavoured to infuse some measure of [[justice]] into the system, and in March 1784 the [[Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil|baron de Breteuil]], a minister of the king's household, addressed a circular to the intendants and the lieutenant of police with a view to preventing the most serious abuses connected with the issue of ''lettres de cachet''.

The [[Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau|Comte de Mirabeau]] wrote a scathing indictment of ''lettres de cachet'' while imprisoned in the dungeon of [[Vincennes]] (by ''lettre de cachet'' obtained by his father). The treatise was published after his liberation in 1782 under the title ''Les Lettres de cachet et des prisons d'etat'' and was widely read throughout Europe.

Besides the Bastille, there were thirty prisons in Paris by 1779 in which a person could be detained without trial.<ref>''The National Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge'', Vol.III, London (1847) Charles Knight, p.1,002</ref> Convents were used for the same purpose.

They were reported to have been openly sold, in the reign of Louis XV, by the mistress of one of his ministers.

In Paris, in 1779, the [[Cour des Aides]] demanded their suppression, and in March 1788 the ''Parlement'' of Paris made some exceedingly energetic remonstrances, which are important for the light they throw upon old French public law. The crown, however, did not decide to lay aside this weapon, and in a declaration to the States-General in the royal session of June 23, 1789 (art. 15) it did not renounce it absolutely.