The question is interesting; we will say a few
words upon it.
I quote M. Renouard.
"Privileges," says M. Renouard, "were a corrective of
regulation."
I ask M. Renouard's permission to translate his thought by
reversing his phrase: Regulation was a corrective of privilege.
For whoever says regulation says limitation: now, how conceive of
limiting privilege before it existed? I can conceive a sovereign
submitting privileges to regulations; but I cannot at all
understand why he should create privileges expressly to weaken
the effect of regulations. There is nothing to prompt such a
concession; it would be an effect without a cause. In logic as
well as in history, everything is appropriated and monopolized
when laws and regulations arrive: in this respect civil
legislation is like penal legislation. The first results
from possession and appropriation, the second from the appearance
of crimes and offences. M. Renouard, preoccupied with the idea
of servitude inherent in all regulation, has considered privilege
as a compensation for this servitude; and it was this which led
him to say that PRIVILEGES ARE A CORRECTIVE OF REGULATION.
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