Polity. This word comes from πολισ , town , from which the Greeks formed πολιτεια , and we ourselves form polity. It has various senses, which require detailed explanation. A comfortable and peaceful life was the first purpose of society. But when people are grouped together wrongdoing is perhaps more common, selfishness more elaborate, and passions, if not more violent, then at least more widespread than when they are scattered. Therefore almost the opposite to what was intended has happened; and those who value only the definition of words, and would try to define society through the word, would guess it to be the exact opposite of what it is. Remedies for this serious problem have been sought, and laws have been drawn up. Laws are rules of conduct according to correct reasoning and natural rights, which good people follow voluntarily, and to which evil people are forced at least superficially to submit. Laws include some that tend towards the general good of society, and others aiming at the good of private individuals. The study of the former is what is meant by the science of Public Law, while that of Private Law is the study of the latter.

The Greeks gave the name polity to the first of these forms of law. Their πολιτεια extended to all kinds of government: one could even speak of the polity of the world, monarchical here, aristocratic there, as the art of establishing a comfortable and peaceful life for the all the world’s inhabitants. In restricting the term to a single country, a single society, polity was the art of obtaining these same advantages for a kingdom, a city etc.

Amongst ourselves, the term police is used for that second sense of law. This department of government is entrusted to a magistrate known as a police lieutenant . His particular responsibility is to enforce laws issued to secure the comfortable and peaceful life of the inhabitants of a city – the capital city for example – in spite of wrongdoing, and the disorders that attend selfishness and passion. See the next article [Police].

It is evident, then, that polity has necessarily varied between the people of different nations. Although its purposes – the comfort and tranquillity of life – were the same everywhere, the particular ways of obtaining them have depended on each nation’s character, its location, the problems it faces etc .

The Jews, the earth’s first people, were the first to have polity . Opening the Mosaic books, one sees laws against idolatry, blasphemy, impurity; ordinances on the sanctity of the day of rest and of feast days; the establishment of reciprocal duties of fathers, mothers, children, masters, and servants, and sumptuary laws to promote modesty and frugality; and the proscription of luxury, intemperance, debauchery, prostitution etc. In short, a body of laws seeking to promote a just order in ecclesiastical, civil and military affairs; to preserve religion and customs; to allow commerce and the arts to flourish; to procure health and security; to promote building; to sustain the poor and encourage hospitality.

For the Greeks, the object of polity was the preservation of life, its goodness and its pleasures. They understood that the preservation of life depended upon birth-rate, health and the supply of food. They worked towards increasing the number of citizens, and providing them with health, salubrious air, pure water, good food, well-prepared medicines, competent doctors and public honesty.

In 312 the Romans sent ambassadors to Greece in search of law and wisdom, with the result that their polity was on roughly the same lines as that of the Athenians.

The French and most of the present inhabitants of Europe have derived their own polity from the ancients – with this difference, that they have paid much greater attention to religion. Important parts of polity for the Greeks and Romans were games and shows, with the aim of increasing their frequency and magnificence. With us, the term refers only to the correction of abuses and the prevention of disorder.

The particular objects of our polity are religion, behaviour, health, food supplies, security, peace, transport, science and the liberal arts, commerce, manufacturing and engineering, servants, labourers and the poor.

Having looked at the objectives of polity among different peoples, let us go on to the means they have used to achieve them.

When the earth was 2904 years old, Menes divided Egypt into three parts, each part into ten provinces or dynasties, & each dynasty into three prefectures. Each prefecture consisted of ten judges, all selected from among the priests, and these were the country’s aristocracy . The prefecture’s judgements were subject to appeal in the nomos , in other words in the high court or council of one of the three great parts.

Hermes Trismegistus, Menes’s secretary, divided the Egyptians into three classes: the king, the priests & the people; & the people into three “conditions”, the soldier, the labourer and the artisan. Only the nobles, that is, the priests, could be admitted to the ranks of justice and royal officialdom. They had to be at least twenty years old and to have no stain on their characters. Their children had to follow in their fathers’ profession. The remainder of the Egyptians’ polity was contained in the following laws. First law, perjury was punishable by death. Second law, if a person kills or injures another in your presence, arrest him if you can, on pain of death. If you cannot, denounce the wrongdoer. Third law, false accusers shall be subject to talionic law. Fourth law, everyone shall go to the magistrate and register his name & profession. Those engaged in a wicked trade, or who make a false declaration, will be put to death. Fifth law, if a master kills his servant, he shall die, the form of execution being decided not according to the man’s standing, but how he did the killing. Sixth law, fathers or mothers who kill their child shall be condemned to carry the corpse in their arms for three days and nights. Seventh law, the parricide shall have pointed reeds driven through all his limbs, laid naked on a bed of thorns and burned alive. Eighth law, the execution of a pregnant woman shall be deferred until after she has given birth; to do otherwise would be to punish two innocent people, the father and the child. Ninth law, cowardice and disobedience by a soldier will be punished in the usual way. This punishment consisted of being exhibited for three consecutive days in woman’s dress, struck from the roll of citizens and sent back to work on the land. Tenth law, he who reveals state secrets to the enemy will have his tongue cut out. Eleventh law, he who defaces coins or who forges false ones, shall have his hands cut off. Twelfth law, amputation of the virile member shall be the penalty for rape. Thirteenth law, adulterous males shall be beaten with rods, females will have their noses cut off. Fourteenth law, he who repudiates a debt of which there is no written record will be taken at his word. Fifteenth law, if there is a written record, the debtor shall pay, but the creditor cannot charge interest of more than double the amount of the principal. Sixteenth law, an insolvent debtor will not receive corporal punishment; society will hand out a more appropriate penalty. Seventeenth law, whoever takes up thievery will be registered with the official in charge of thefts, who will keep a log of stolen items and return any such to those who claim them, while keeping a quarter of their value as his and his colleagues’ fee. Theft cannot be abolished and it is better to keep an inventory and retain a portion than to lose the lot.

We have listed these Egyptian regulations because they are few in number and give an idea of that nation’s justice. It will not be possible to go into the same degree of detail with the Hebrews’ polity . But here we shall have something that we lack elsewhere; I mean a rather exact knowledge of the officials to whom the exercise of this justice was entrusted.

Moses, on the advice of his father-in-law Jethro, recognised that, despite the breadth of his intelligence and his talent, he could not manage polity entirely by himself, so he entrusted part of his authority to a few god-fearing men who were enemies of dishonesty and avarice. He divided the people into tribes of 1000 families, each tribe into departments of 100 families, each department into neighbourhoods of 50 families, and each neighbourhood into segments of 10. And he appointed a bailiff for every complete tribe, with other subordinates for the departments and their divisions. The bailiff was called Sara alaphem , either prefect or the tribe-bailiff; the subordinates were Sara meot , prefects of 100 families; Sara hhamischein , prefects for 50 families; and Sara hazaroth , prefects for 10 families.

He also created a council of seventy persons called, according to their age and worthiness, zekemni, seniores and magistri populi . This council was called the Sanhedrin . The High Priest presided over it. All questions of religion were within its cognizance. It ensured the observance of the law. It alone judged capital crimes and it also heard appeals from inferior courts.

Below the Sanhedrin were two councils to which civil and criminal matters were brought in the first instance. These subordinate courts were each composed of seven judges, always including two levites.

Such was the people’s government and polity when they were in the desert but, once the Hebrews became settled, the standing of the sare changed. They no longer watched over the families, but over the quarters, or sections, of the town, and were called sare pelakim or the kireiah .

Jerusalem, which served as the model for all other towns, was subdivided into four quarters, whose names were pelek bethacaram , or the quarter of the vineyard, pelek bethfur or the quarter of the citadel, pelek malpha or the quarter of the look-out and pelek ceila or the divisional quarter. Two officers in each quarter had charge of the police and the public interest. One, being senior, superintended the whole quarter and was called sare pelek , the quarter’s prefect. The sarahhtsi pelek , or junior officer, operated only in one part of the quarter. It was a little like our own Old and New Commissioners, and their functions were apparently exactly the same. So much for general matters concerning the police and the government of the Hebrews.

Police in Athenian Greece . The Greeks also held to the principle of dividing the magistrates’ work between several individuals. Every year the Athenians appointed a senate of five hundred prominent citizens. Each of them took his turn as president and the remainder of the assembly acted as his council.

These five hundred judges were divided into ten groups called prytanes . And, since the lunar year was in use, which they also divided into ten periods, each prytane governed and appointed the police for 35 days, with the four remaining days of the year distributed among the four premier prytanes who had begun the year.

Among the fifty monthly judges, ten were selected weekly and called présidens, proeres , and, from this ten, seven were drawn by lot to share out the days of the week between them, with the men for each day being called archai . So much for the polity of the city.

Here is how the republic was administered. While one among the ten prytanes was appointed to the above positions, each of the other nine selected their own magistrate, called an archonte . Of these nine archontes, three meted out popular justice during the month: one taking the ordinary civilian matters, along with the town police; he was called the poliarch, prefect or town governor ; the next took religious affairs and was called basileus, or king; and the third dealt with foreign and military affairs under the name polemarch or army commander . The six other archontes formed the councils of the poliarch, the king and the polemarch. They examined as a body any new laws and reported on them to the people. They went under the generic title the thesmotetes .

All these officials could be removed and were appointed annually. But there was one tribunal always identically composed, the Areopage. This assembly was formed of citizens who had served in the past in one of the three great magistracies, and all other jurisdictions were subordinated to them. But these were not the only officers either of the government or the police. The Greeks realized that it was almost impossible to avoid problems except by subdivision, so they had their decimates, or exploratores; their panepiscopes or inspectores omnium rerum; and their chorepiscopes or inspectores regionum urbis. The Lacedaemonians included all these officers under the common name of nomophularchs, the agents and guardians of the laws.

The other towns of Greece were similarly subdivided, the small ones into two, the medium-sized into three and the large into four. The first were called a dipolis, the second a tripolis and the third a tetrapolis . In Athens each quarter had a sophronist (and in Lacedaemonia an armozeen), or inspector of religion and morals, a gynaeconome or inspector of decency and female attire, an opsinome or inspector of feasts, an astunome or inspector of the peace and public comfort, an agoranome or inspector of foodstuffs, markets and commerce, and a metronome or inspector of weights and measures. Such were the officers and the organisation of Greek polity .

The Romans had ones of their own, but these did not remain constant. Let us see what they were under the kings, and what they became under the consuls and the emperors. When still contained within a small town of a mere thousand houses, and a circumference of just twelve hundred yards, the Romans did not need a great many police officers. Their founder sufficed and, in his absence, a viceroy, who took the title of prefect, or praefectus urbis .

Only criminal matters were outside the jurisdiction of the sovereign or the prefect. The kings reserved the distribution of patronage to themselves, but passed the punishment of crimes to the people. So the people either met amongst themselves or appointed their own judge advocate.

There was still no investigating magistrate other than the sovereign or his prefect, as the senator then was no more than a citizen in the first of the three ranks into which Romulus had divided the Roman people. But as the town grew larger, and the people more numerous, the need to create more magistrates was quickly apparent. So two officers were appointed to investigate crime, under the title of quaestors . That is all that was done under the kings, whether because of they were jealous of their power or because there was little need to share it more widely.

With the ousting of Tarquin, two consuls supplanted the king. These consuls performed all the duties of the sovereign and, just as he had done, appointed a town prefect in case of their absence. So matters stood for a hundred and sixteen years but the people, growing tired of providing none of the state magistrates, sought to remedy the indignity. They demanded tribunes drawn from their own ranks and, since they had strength in numbers, two were given them. These tribunes required assistants, and so the aediles were created. The tribunes maintained the laws with regard to the people, while the aediles did the same for buildings.

However the consuls were always the sole state lawmakers. Through the mouthpiece of the tribunes, the people demanded written laws to which they could consent. Once more it was necessary to give way, and so send a delegation to Greece to collect some from that civilised people.

The deputies stayed three years in Greece and brought back a collection of the wisest things they had observed. From this, ten tables of the law were framed, to which two more were later added, giving twelve tables of the law.

Rome, however, was expanding, and officials were multiplying to a point where a pair of consuls was no longer enough. Two new officials were created under the title of censors. Their role was to carry out a count of the people every five years, to oversee large-scale construction, the parks, street-cleaning, the maintenance of trunk roads and aqueducts, collecting public revenues for their own use, and everything concerning the manners and the discipline of citizens.

Such responsibilities were wide and the censors, as they had been authorised to do, appointed aediles to whom they delegated the care of the streets and parks. These officials were so effective that food supplies, games and entertainments were added to their brief, and theirs was among the most burdensome work in the whole republic. They took the title curatores urbis, as that of aediles no longer fitted them.

Aediles were drawn from the plebeian class. The importance of their responsibilities provoked the jealousy of the senators, who took advantage of one particular plebeian demand to snatch back part of their power. The plebeians wanted one consul to come from the plebeian ranks, and the senators in riposte demanded two aediles from among the patricians. The plebeians were surprised by the Senate's move but, as the aediles had been struggling with the impossibility of providing the people with grand games, since the expense exceeded their means, young aristocrats offered to meet the costs on condition that they shared the credit. The proposal was accepted and there came to be one plebeian consul and two patrician aediles, or curules. This name derived from the small ivory stools they installed in their chariots.

The consuls's legal authority was limited to issuing a reprimand – ignominia . When such a reprimand was confirmed judicially, there followed the entire loss of a person’s reputation, otherwise their infamy – infamia .

The growth of business led to the creation of more officials. The appointment of a praetor led to the separation of the business of the republic and of government from the police and court cases. This magistrate dispensed justice, doing on behalf of the consuls what the kings had done on their own behalf for two hundred and forty years.

The praetor thus became, so to speak, a colleague of the consuls and was distinguished by the same marks of distinction and, like the quaestors, had the right to assistants. The aediles were subordinated to him and acted under his sole orders as his agents.

The body of laws grew in proportion to the growing number of different magistrates. It took time to learn these laws and there were more of them than any single individual could know. This is why the praetor created the centumvirs, five men drawn from each of the thirty-five tribes, and had access to their advice in legal matters. In questions of fact he nominated whatever assessors he thought appropriate. In criminal cases the quaestors had the duty of reporting to the populace, part of whose function had always been to hand down judgement.

But the inconvenience of assembling the people on every such important occasion gave rise to the creation of standing quaestors, and of the transfer of the quaestors' cases to the praetor's court, consequently establishing the criminal and civil police . The quaestors, who had until then received their writ from the people, began to come under the praetor, who now directed the aediles as well as the quaestors.

The aediles were allowed up to ten aides, called decemvirs. Without legal powers these aides found it difficult to carry out their duties. Some did obtain the aedile’s power but only in the case of the fire-fighting aediles, the aediles incendiorum extinguendorum . Julius Caesar subsequently created two aediles for food supplies, aediles cereales. So now there were sixteen aediles – two plebeian aediles, two patrician curules , ten incendiorum extinguendorum and two cereales But all of them were subordinate to the praetor and acted strictly as delegates and vice-praetors.

These officers went on to make several attempts to escape from this jurisdiction and become an independent body. They succeeded up to the point of enjoying the right to publish under their joint names an edict known as the aedictum aedilium but this anomaly did not last long. They returned to duty and, to prevent them henceforth from abandoning it again, it was written into the law that, while edicta aedilium sunt pars jurios praetorii (the aediles’ edicts are equal to the judgements of the praetors), it was also the case that edicta praetorum habent vim legis (the praetorian edicts have the force of law).

This meant that the praetors' authority remained fully and completely intact until it happened that certain factions, aiming to ruin the republic and perceiving that the power of this magistracy was an obstacle to their designs, proposed first to loosen it, and then to subdivide it, thereby negating it completely. The Roman praetor had had a counterpart for foreign affairs under the title praetor peregrinus. The malcontents succeeded in giving him six deputies to deal with criminal matters, and among these provincial praetors were chosen because they were uneducated. Subsequently two praetors for food supplies were added. Eventually the subdivision was carried so far that under the triumvirate, which completed the ruin of government and good order, the praetors numbered as many as sixty-four, who all had their own courts. This meant that plotting by the aediles began again and, for fear of their success, the power of the praetors continued to be diluted by being multiplied.

This was the state of affairs when Augustus rose to Imperial power. He initiated reforms by reducing the number of praetors to sixteen, with power only over civil matters in the first instance, and subordinating them to a city prefect, whose jurisdiction extended over the city of Rome and her territories as far as six stades away, which is equivalent of thirty-five of our leagues. As the sole magistrate of police, this prefecture (which carried all the prerogatives of our police lieutenants) was such an important position that first of all Augustus appointed his son Agrippa. His successors were Mycenus, Messala, Corvinus, Statilius Taurus etc.

The new magistrate was responsible for all public utilities and civil peace, for food supplies, sales, purchases, weights and measures, arts, entertainments, corn imports, public granaries, games, building, parks, street repairs and the maintenance of the main roads etc.

Augustus then tackled the remaining body of aediles. He cut out ten of them and removed the powers that the remainder had usurped from the last praetor, whom he abolished. Fourteen curatores urbis were substituted for the praetors and aediles as city superintendents or commissioners who served as aides to the city prefect – adjutores praefecti urbis. Augustus formed as many districts in Rome as he had created commissioners, one serving for each of them.

Augustus's innovation eventually led, under Constantine, to the abolition of the aediles. The fourteen commissioners were plebeians, a number doubled by Alexander Severus when he selected an additional fourteen from the patrician class, which presumably means that Rome had then been subdivided into fourteen extra districts.

Convinced of the need to maintain the public grain stores with care, the Romans under Julius Caesar had created two praetors and two aediles to superintend the purchase, transport, storage and distribution of grain. Augustus abolished these four officials and gave all this administrative work back to the city prefect, providing him with the relief of a subordinate called the prefectus annonae, the prefect of supplies. This official was drawn from the order of patricians.

The security of the city at night had once been entrusted to three officials called triumvirs nocturnes. They made their rounds and ensured that the plebeian watchmen were at their posts. Aediles took the place of these triumvirs nocturnes and their numbers were accordingly increased by ten, but these Augustus abolished as we have seen. He replaced this service with one thousand elite men, from which he formed seven companies each with its own tribune. Consequently each company had charge of two districts. The tribunes were all subordinate to a commander-in-chief called the prefectus vigilum, or commander of the watch, who was subordinate to the city prefect. To these officials Augustus added, under the prefect of Rome, a superintendent of canals and other civil works either for the supply or the storage of water, the river Tiber and the sewers. As for the censor’s role, he retained this for himself, merely entrusting the taxation of the people and the collection of public money to an official who bore the title magister census. He appointed a superintendent of large works, a superintendent of lesser building work, a superintendent of statues, and an inspector of streets and their cleaning who was called prefectus rerum nitentium .

To make sure the district commissioners were well-informed, he placed three officers under them, informers, neighbourhood constables, and sentries. The informers, two for each district, reported any disorder to the superintendent. To understand the role of the constables it must be pointed out that each district was subdivided into departments and that four of these officers had the duty of watching each department. They went about with weapons, and provided their commissioner with an armed force – that being the constables’ role. Rome had fourteen districts; each district was subdivided into four hundred and twenty four departments, or vici . So to maintain order, and ensure public safety and administration, this whole area had a total of seventy-eight commissioners, twenty-eight informers, and one thousand six hundred and ninety-six neighbourhood constables. The sentries occupied fixed posts in the city and their function was to quell unrest.

So much for the police in Rome, but what about that of the rest of the empire? The Roman masters of the world had advanced this maxim as the principle of sure and solid government: omnes civititates debent sequi consuetudinem urbis Romae (all citizens must follow the customs of the city of Rome). They therefore posted a proconsul into each of the subjugated provinces. This magistrate had the authority and duties of a Roman Prefect and of a Consul. But this being too much for one man he was assisted by a proconsular deputy, legatur proconsulis. The Proconsul managed the police and administered justice but eventually it was thought appropriate, since the demands of police work required continual presence and vigilance, to establish deputies of the proconsul under the title of servitores locorum . Augustus left this situation untouched. He aspired only to perfect it, by dividing the regions under the Proconsuls’ protection into smaller departments and increasing the number of officers.

Gaul was partitioned into 17 provinces and 305 populations or cities and each population into several distinct departments. Each population had its capital and the capital of the leading one was known as the provincial metropolis. Judges were distributed throughout all the towns. The magistrate with jurisdiction over any one of the 17 entire provinces was titled President or Proconsul according to whether the province had been created by the emperor or the senate. The other magistrates held no other title than judges-in-ordinary ( judices ordinarii ) in the large towns, petty judges ( judices pedanei ] in the middling towns and, in the smallest places, borough or village mayors ( magistri pagorum ). Business was referred by the mayors up to the judges-in-ordinary at the capital, by the capital to the metropolis, by the metropolis to the primateship and sometimes by the primateship to the emperor. The primateship was an authority established in each of the four oldest Gallic towns, to which the jurisdiction of the metropolises was subordinate.

But all these referrals necessarily cost the nations much expense. To mitigate this problem Constantine subordinated all the tribunals to that of a prefect of the Gallic praetoria where business was settled at last resort without going outside the province.

Judges from Rome retained their old titles until the time of Hadrian. In that emperor’s reign they assumed those of dukes and counts, for the following reasons. The emperors were now beginning to rule through a council; the members of this council had the title of comites , or counts, who were so proud of this that, when they transferred from the Emperor’s council to other postings, they thought it proper to retain their titles, adding only the names of the provinces to which they had been posted. But there were two kinds of province, the pacified and the militarised. Those posted to the militarised provinces were normally generals commanding the standing garrison, and these took the titles of duces, dukes.

There was not much amiss with the polity of Rome, but in the provinces it was most imperfect. It was too difficult, not to say impossible, for an outsider to know the spirit of a people well enough, their habits, customs, haunts and an endless number of essential matters, for this requires expertise and the avoidance of many significant pitfalls. Consequently Augustus, or another emperor – since the date of this innovation is uncertain – ruled that the consular deputies and the local commissioners should recruit a certain number of aides from the native population who would advise on their duties. The choice of these aides was initially at the discretion of the provincial presidents, or chief magistrates, but they abused the privilege to the point where it became necessary to transfer it to the bishops’ council of clergy, the magistrates and the leading citizens. The praetorian prefect ratified the appointments. Subsequently the emperor reserved the power to make these appointments for himself.

These aides had various titles. They were called, as in Rome, curatores urbis , city commissioners; servatores locorum or regional protectors; vicarii magistratuum or judge-deputies, parentes plebis , fathers of the people, defensores disciplinae , inquisitores discussores etc. and, in Greek provinces, irenarchi , moderators or keepers of the peace. Their duties were very extensive and in order to carry them out safely they were given two bailiffs. The gate-keepers or aparitores stationnarii were also under orders to obey them.

Between these new police officers and Roman officials disputes arose which would become exacerbated had the emperor not anticipated them. He ordered that the consular deputies and local commissioners be selected from amongst the leading inhabitants, which protected them from the contempt in which Roman officials were held. The history of the polity established by the Romans in Gaul leads naturally on to that of France, to which we now proceed.

The Enforcement of Law in France . The Gauls had been under Roman rule for 470 years when Pharamond crossed the Rhine at the head of a band of settlers. He established himself on its banks, laying the foundations of the French monarchy at Treves, where he established himself. Clodions advanced as far as Amiens; Merovée invaded the rest of that province, as well as Champagne, Artois, part of the Ile de France and Normandy. Childeric established himself as master of Paris, which Clovis made his seat of power and capital of his domains. Gaul now took the name of France, after the German province from which the Franks originated.

Three peoples shared the Gallic lands at the beginning: Gauls, Romans, and Franks. The only way to unify these peoples was by maintaining Roman law enforcement and the early kings made prudent use of it. In doing so they distributed the titles of primate, duke and senior count to their generals; of lower ranking count to their field commanders and colonels; and of mayor to their captains, lieutenants and other junior officers. As for their duties, these remained the same. Payment was allowed only to these titled magistrates, a proportion of the revenues from their jurisdictions.

The generals, field commanders and colonels willingly accepted the titles of nobleman, primate, duke or count, but the captains and other officers preferred to retain their titles as centurions, cinquanturions and decurions than to take those of junior magistrates or village mayors. The jursidiction of the decurions was subordinate to that of the cinquanturions, and these were subordinate to the centurions, and from that apparently stems the distinction between our high, middle and lower courts.

The provincial prefect of Gaul, whose court was supreme, became the Count of the Palace, comes palatii , but was subsequently titled Mayor of the Palace, the Duke of France and the Duke of Dukes.

Such was the state of things under Hugh Capet, until the troubles that disturbed his reign caused changes to the kingdom’s police. Those in control of the French provinces conceived the idea of claiming that their overlordships belonged to their families by heredity. As their strength was greater than his, Hugh Capet agreed on condition that they swear fealty, give homage and serve him in time of war, and that, in the absence of male heirs, their lands would revert to the Crown. It was the best Hugh Capet could do.

So now the king was master in one province while the lords each held sway over provinces of their own. But soon these lords ceased troubling to dispense justice, relieving themselves of the responsibility by passing it to junior officials, and from that came viscounts ( vice-comites ), provosts ( praespositi juridicundo ), vicars ( vicarii ), castellans ( castilorum custodes ) and, as village leaders, mayors ( majores villarum ).

Retaining their suzerainty over these officers the dukes and counts would hold solemn audiences between four and six times a year, or more frequently, and here they presided over these gatherings of their peers, or principal vassals, which were known as assizes.

As military affairs occupied these lords’ whole attention, they left all civilian questions to their bailiffs. ‘Bailiff’ is an old Gallic word, meaning protector or guardian. In effect bailiffs were originally the dukes’ and counts’ trustees. In some provinces they were entitled seneschals, a German term which, put into French, means ‘former steward’, or knight-at-arms, because the dukes and counts preferred to delegate their authority to men who had been their vassals. This is the origin of the two juridical ranks which survive today in the realm’s main towns, the viscount or provost and the bailiff or seneschal.

The creation of provosts came after that of bailiffs. In crown provinces the provosts enjoyed all the powers of a duke or a count, but it was not long before they abused them. Bishops and their chapters raised objections and the king listened. He granted them their own judge, the Provost of Paris. That is how the right of guard-guardian came about, whereby cases concerning certain privileged individuals and communities devolved upon the capital city.

Some attention was also given to the pleas of those who did not enjoy the right of guard-guardian. Commissioners were dispatched throughout the realm to redress wrongs committed by the provosts, dukes and counts. The lords did not like these and the king, lacking the power of enforcement, settled for a reduction of the commissioners’ number to four, to be based at St Quentin - previously Varmande - Sens, Macon and St Pierre-le-Moutier. Immediately many citizens from other provinces sought to live in these towns, where townsmen’s rights were given them on condition that they acquire property and settle there. From this come the ‘royal rights’ of these townsfolk and their letters patent.

The four commissioners took the titles of bailiff and only the Provost of Paris lay outside their jurisdiction. But within the next two centuries the crown recovered the lost duchies and counties, and the bailiffs and seneschals became crown judges, as did the judges who had retained their ancient titles of viscount, duke and provost.

The titles of bailiff and seneschal rightly belonged only to dukes’ and counts’ deputies. However lower officers conferred them on their own deputies and this abuse persisted, from which comes the ranking of major, intermediate and minor bailiff courts, in a hierarchy whereby those in villages were subordinate to those in towns, and those in towns came under the provincial courts. Of the minor bailiff’s courts there were some that acquired, thought they did not lose their subordinate status.

Bailiffs or seneschals had the right to choose their own deputies, in case of sickness or absence. But as the laws multiplied, and to know them demanded long study, it was ordained that deputy bailiffs and seneschals had to be licensed as lawyers.

Such was the state of the polity of France.

This realm was divided into a large number of jurisdictions, higher and lower, royal and seigneurial, and it was at about this time that good government was supposedly being turned upside down by those managing the king’s revenues. Their greed extended to the administration of justice in royal estates, bailiwicks and seneschalsies. Not even the Provost of Paris was an exception.

But, to understand the rest of our polity and its evolution, it is necessary to examine how the perpetual conflicts between jurisdictions gave way to the establishment of a polity managed by townspeople, and be cast into a maze of detail from which it will scarcely be possible to extricate oneself, and on which one may consult the excellent volume by M. de la Mare. It will suffice merely to pursue what became the capital’s polity etc.

In 275, under the emperor Aurelian, this had been entrusted to a senior Roman judge under the title praefectus urbis , who ostentatiously changed this to Count of Paris, comes parisiensis . In case of sickness or absence, he nominated a vice-regent entitled Viscount , vicecomes .

Hugh the Great obtained the enfeoffment of the Count of Paris from Charles the Simple (his pupil) in 554, with the condition that it revert in the absence of a male heir. In 1082 Odon, Count of Paris, died without a son and the countship of Paris returned to the Crown, while Falco was the last viscount of Paris. The judge appointed by the crown to succeed Falco had the title Provost, with all the powers of the viscount, though the title itself was no longer deemed appropriate.

Saint Louis returned the Provostship into the hands of contractors and management of the capital’s finances was detached from the magistrature. Philip the Fair and Charles VII reformed the rest of the realm by separating royal revenue, seneschalries, bailiwicks, provostships and other subsidiary judiciaries.

Saint Louis’s practical innovations gave rise to the appointment of an estate tax collector, an officer of the seal, and sixteen notaries. Originally, the title of notary did not mean an official, but a person engaged in writing copies of legal transactions between individuals . No law drawn up in the presence of an official notary can be found before 1270. These documents were then submitted to a magistrate who by receiving them inter acta gave them public authorization and delivered them sealed to the interested parties.

The Provostship of Paris was an important position until the appointment of the governors. Louis XII had established these in his personal provinces. Francis I conferred one on Paris & this new magistrate soon relieved the Provost of all his functions, except that of convening and managing the arrière-ban. This was a great setback to the influence of the courts of justice. They then had to suffer another: the creation of a higher magistrate under the title Bailiff of Paris, who was given a Deputy Warden, twelve advisers, an advocate, a Royal Prosecutor, a clerk and two ushers. But this arrangement lasted a mere four years, after which the new position was merged again into the Provostship of Paris.

The Provost of Paris, the bailiffs and senechals were originally judges of last resort. As parliament was at that time peripatetic, it met only once or twice a year wherever the king decided and sat just a few days. It considered only great matters but the large quantity of business forced Philip the Fair in an edict of 1302 to fix its sessions and set up similar courts in various places and introduce the practice of appeals.

By 1400 the Provost of Paris and his deputies enjoyed both civil and criminal jurisdiction but subsequently disputes between this magistrate’s deputies themselves cropped up, occasioned by the uncertainty of the boundaries between their duties. These disputes persisted until 1630 when polity became the preserve of the civil tribunal of the Chatelet. Matters remained unchanged until the reign of Louis XIV. This monarch recognised the bad condition of the polity and set about its reform. His first move was to separate the contentious civil jurisdiction and to appoint a judge expressly to exercise the powers formerly enjoyed by the Provost of Paris. To this end the office of the Provost’s civil deputy was abolished in 1667 and two deputies to the Provost were appointed, of which one was entitled Provost’s Civil Councillor and Lieutenant and the other Provost’s Councillor and Lieutenant of Police . The decree that created these posts was followed by a great many more, some of which defined their duties, while others forbade palace bailiffs to interfere in the Chatelet’s new jurisdictions. In 1674 the Lieutenancy of Police created in 1667 was united with one established in the same year, 1674, in the person of M. de la Reynie. There was now an administrative tribunal established in the capital, distinct from all others.

Having reached this point, we must say a word about the officers who were needed to cooperate with this judge in the preservation of good order.

The first are the commissioners. On the origin of this post and the changes it has undergone the article Commissioner may be consulted, and the book by M. de la Mare. I will only say that commissioners had been assisting the Chatelet magistrates in administrative work very early on; that by an edict of Philip of Valois their numbers were fixed at sixteen for 184 years, until 21 April 1337 when Francis I doubled the number; and that their ranks were further increased, and then decreased, and at last as fixed at 55. I would never come to an end if I were to start detailing their duties, which is why one should look at M. de la Mare’s book, volume 1, page 220, where their elaboration fills several pages. However they may be summarized as being the guardianship of religion, behaviour, food stocks and health. However these four stems have many branches.

Commissioners are assisted in their duties by inspectors, officers of the watch, constables etc. whose duties may be seen in the articles concerning them in this dictionary.

Some might perhaps wish us to deal with the polity of other European nations. But, aside from the fact that this would carry us too far away, we would merely discover more or less the same officials under different names, with the same care for the peaceful and comfortable life of citizens, although nowhere perhaps carried as far as one may see in the capital of this kingdom.

I am very far from thinking that its state is perfect. Once one is aware of disorder it isn’t enough to dream up remedies. One must be vigilant about how these remedies are applied, and that is the part of the problem that seems to have been neglected, although without it the rest would amount to nothing.

The laws of polity are like the growth of houses that make up a town. As the town begins to form, each house is established on suitable ground, without any regard for conformity, so that a monstrous accumulation of buildings arises which whole centuries of care and attention could hardly sort out. Similarly, as societies form, laws are made, initially according to need. These needs grow with the civil population while the body of law swells to an enormous number of disjointed regulations, whose disorder can only be compared to that of the houses. Our only planned towns are those that have been burned down, and it would appear that to have a wholly integrated system of polity we would have to incinerate the one we already have, though this solution, while it may be the only good one, is nevertheless impractical. How imperfect our polity is may easily be demonstrated by the trouble that any sensible man has in hitting on a durable solution to the smallest difficulty. It is easy to promulgate a law. But when it comes to enforcement without increasing the problem, one finds everything needs overhauling almost from top to bottom.