The only ordinance we have upon this subject is that which obliged the lords to choose their bailiffs .from among the laity.[308] It is a mistake to look upon this as a law of their creation; for it says no such thing. Besides, the intention of the legislator is determined by the reasons assigned in the ordinance: "to the end that the bailiffs may be punished for their prevarications, it is necessary they be taken from the order of the laity." The immunities of the clergy in those days are very well known.



　　We must not imagine that the privileges which the nobility formerly enjoyed, and of which they are now divested, were taken from them as usurpations; no, many of those privileges were lost through neglect, and others were given up because, as various changes had been introduced in the course of so many ages, they were inconsistent with those changes.



　　44. Of the Proof by Witnesses. The judges, who had no other rule to go by than the usages, inquired very often by witnesses into every cause that was brought before them.



　　The usage of judicialcombats beginning to decline, they made their inquests in writing. But a verbal proof committed to writing is never more than a verbal proof; so that this only increased the expenses of law proceedings. Regulations were then made which rendered most of those inquests useless;[309] public registers were established, which ascertained most facts, as nobility, age, legitimacy, and marriage. Writing is a witness very hard to corrupt; the customs were therefore reduced to writing. All this is very reasonable; it is much easier to go and see in the baptismal register whether Peter is the son of Paul than to prove this fact by a tedious inquest. When there are a number of usages in a country, it is much easier to write them all down in a code, than to oblige individuals to prove every usage. At length the famous ordinance was made which prohibited the admitting of the proof by witnesses for a debt exceeding an hundred livres, except there was the beginning of a proof in writing.



　　45. Of the Customs of France. France, as we have already observed, was governed by written customs, and the particular usages of each lordship constituted the civil law. Every lordship had its civil law, according to Beaumanoir,[310] and so particular a law, that this author, who is looked upon as a luminary; and a very great luminary of those times; says he does not believe that throughout the whole kingdom there were two lordships entirely governed by the same law.



　　This prodigiousdiversity had a twofold origin. With regard to the first, the reader may recollect what has been already said concerning it in the chapter of local customs:[311] and as to the second, we meet with it in the different events of legal duels, it being natural that a continual series of fortuitous cases must have been productive of new usages.



　　

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