Browse

Government

thumbnail of the text
Source

The Children’s Charter

By the early 20th century, urbanization and industrialization led many reformers to focus on child welfare and a recognition of children's rights as separate from those of adults. Several years later, Congress responded by creating the U.S.

Literary Source Thumbnail
Source

Islamic Empire: Religious Text, Women Sura

This Sura (or chapter) of the Qur’an, known as al-Nisa’, or “Women,” details a variety of legal rights and restrictions for Muslims in the realm of marriage, inheritance, and other male-female relationships.

Source

Damiens’s Testimony to Parlement

During the course of his trial Damiens was interrogated over fifty times by the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris and by the King’s prosecutors. The interrogators were concerned above all to determine if Damiens had accomplices and if so, what group was behind the attack.

Source

Letter from a Patriot Claiming to Prove Damiens Had Accomplices

This pamphlet was one of the many published in France in response to the news of Damiens’s attack on the King.

Source

Lamoignon, "The Principles of the French Monarchy" (1787)

On 19 November 1787, the King convoked the Parlement of Paris to enforce registration of an edict allowing the indebted royal treasury to borrow an additional 420 million livres. When the King appeared before the magistrates, his Keeper of the Seals, Chrétien–François de Lamoignon spoke for him.

Source

The "Session of the Scourging" (3 March 1766)

The twelve highest royal courts, known as parlements, not only heard civil and criminal suits; they also had the responsibility of discussing and registering royal edicts before their enactment.

Source

Parlement of Brittany

Particularly vocal in its resistance to the financial edicts of 1763 was the Parlement of Rennes, which had jurisdiction in the province of Brittany. A series of "remonstrances," issued by this court between 1763 and 1765, reveal the conflict between the parlementarians and the crown.

Source

Père Duchesne Idealizes the Sans–culottes

The sans–culotte [without the breeches of the wealthy] became the symbol of the committed, patriotic revolutionary everyman.

Source

Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern

The French novelist and essayist François–René Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was a royalist who for a time admired Napoleon. Like Burke, he denounced the revolutionary reliance on reason and advocated a return to Christian principles.

Source

Historical Essays on the Life of Marie–Antoinette, of Austria (1783)

Although by law, political power could not pass through the Queen’s body (only male heirs could succeed to the throne in France), there was great political interest in the body of Louis XVI’s Queen, Marie Antoinette, a Habsburg princess whose marriage into the Bourbon household solidified a diplo