Decreeing the Suppression of Craft-Guilds

Louis, etc. We owe it to our subjects to assure them the full and complete enjoyment of their rights; we owe that protection especially to that class of men who, possessing nothing but their labor and industry, above all others have the need and right of employing to the limit of their capacity their sole resources for subsistence.

We have viewed with pain the multiplied blows which have been struck at this natural and common right of ancient institutions, blows which neither time, nor opinion, nor even the acts emanating from the authority, which seems to have sanctioned them, have been able to make legitimate.

In nearly all the cities of our realm, the exercise of various arts and trades is concentrated in the hands of a small number of maîtres incorporated in a guild, who may, to the exclusion of all other citizens, make or sell the particular objects of commerce of which they enjoy the exclusive privilege; consequently, those of our subjects who, by inclination or by necessity, desire to exercise the arts and trades, may do so only by acquiring the mastership (maîtrise), to which they are ineligible until they have passed an apprenticeship as long and arduous as it is superfluous, and after they have satisfied claims and multiplied exactions by which a part of the money they so greatly need to establish their trade or to open their shop, or even for their subsistence, they find consumed in sheer waste.

Those who are so unfortunate as to be unable to meet these expenses are reduced to a precarious existence under the domination of maîtres, condemned to waste their lives in indigence, or to carry on outside their country an industry they might have made useful to the State.

Citizens of all classes are deprived of the right to choose what laborers they would employ, and of advantages competition would give them in the low price and excellence of labor. Often one cannot execute the simplest work without having recourse to many workmen of different guilds, without enduring the delays, the infidelities, the exactions which necessitate or favor the pretensions of the various guilds, and the caprices of their arbitrary and injurious regime.

Thus the effect of these institutions, on the part of the state, is an appreciable diminution of trade and of industrial labor; with respect to a numerous part of our subjects, a loss of wages and means of subsistence; on the part of the inhabitants of the cities in general, complete subjection to exclusive privileges, the effect of which is exactly analogous to that of an effective monopoly, a monopoly of which those who control it against the public are themselves the victims whenever they in their turn have need of the commodities or trade controlled by another guild.

These abuses crept in by degrees. They were originally brought about by the interests of private individuals who established them against public interests. It was only after a long interval of time that authority, possibly deceived, possibly seduced by the appearance of utility, gave to them a sort of sanction.

The source of evil is in the privilege accorded to artisans of the same trade of assembling and combining into a single body.

It appears that when the cities began to be freed from feudal servitude and to be formed into communities, the facility of classifying the citizens according to their profession introduced that custom which was unknown until that time. The different professions thus came to be regarded as the private societies of which the general community was composed. The religious fraternities, by drawing more closely the bonds which united them with persons of the same professions, gave them more frequent occasion of assembling and of occupying themselves in the associations, with the interests common to that particular guild; an interest which they pursued with continuous activity, to the prejudice of those of society in general.

The corporations once formed promulgated their rules, and, under different pretexts, came to be authorized by the police.

The foundation of these rules is from the first to exclude from the exercise of a trade any one who is not a member of the guild; their general purpose is to restrict as far as possible the number of masters, and to render the acquisition of a mastership a difficulty almost insurmountable to any except the children of the existing masters. It is to this end that they have contrived the multiplicity of expenses and formalities of admittance, the difficulties connected with the arbitrary judgment of trial-pieces, especially the costly and needlessly protracted apprenticeships, and the prolonged servitude of the journeyman: institutions which have the further object of giving the masters gratuitously, during many years, the enjoyment of the fruits of the labors of the aspirants.

The guilds devote themselves especially to excluding from their territory foreign commodities and labor; they lay great stress on the pretended advantage of excluding from commerce such commodities as are supposed to be poorly made. The pretext led them to demand for themselves regulations of a new kind, tending to prescribe the quality of raw materials, their use and their manufacture; these regulations, whose execution was entrusted to officers of the guilds, gave to them an authority which became a means, not only of more effectually excluding aliens when suspected of infraction, but in addition of subjecting the masters of the guilds to the domination of leaders, and of compelling them, under fear of being prosecuted as suspected offenders, never to separate their interests from those of the association, and thus making them accomplices in all the maneuvers inspired by the spirit of monopoly animating the leading members of the guilds.

Among these arrangements, unreasonable and carried out to an infinite number of minute rules, but always dictated by the greatest interests of the masters of each guild, is the one which excludes entirely all others than the sons of masters or those who marry the daughters of the masters. They reject, besides, those whom they call foreigners, that is to say, those who are born in another city. In a large number of the guilds, to be married is sufficient to exclude one from apprenticeship, and consequently, from a mastership.

The spirit of monopoly which has prompted the contrivance of these regulations, has been able even to exclude women from trades most appropriate to their sex, such as that of embroidery which they may not exercise even for their own account.

We will not pursue further the enumeration of the bizarre arrangements, tyrannical and contrary to humanity and good manners, which fill these obscure codes, conceived by greed, adopted without examination in times of ignorance, and which only need to be known to become the object of public indignation.

These guilds, however, came to be authorized in all the cities, together with all their statutes and privileges, sometimes by the letters of our predecessors, obtained under different pretexts or by means of money which they paid for their confirmation from reign to reign, frequently by the writs of our courts, sometimes by the simple decisions of police or even by custom alone.

At length the custom prevailed of regarding the restrictions put upon industry as common law. The government was accustomed to make a financial resource of the taxes imposed on the guilds and of the multiplication of their privileges.

Henry III. gave, by his edict of December 3d, 1581, to that institution the scope and form of a general law. He established the arts and trades in corporations and guilds in all the cities and villages of the kingdom; he subjected all artisans to the maîtrise and to the trade corporations. The edict of April 5th, 1587, enlarged yet more these arrangements by subjecting all merchants to the same laws as the artisans. The edict of March, 1673, purely fiscal, by ordaining the execution of the two preceding edicts, added to the guilds already existing, other corporations unknown before that time.

The Department of Finance sought more and more to extend the resources which it found in the existence of the societies. Independently of the taxes and establishment of the guilds and of new maîtrises, there was created in the guilds a class of offices under different names, and those holding the offices were obliged to purchase them by means of loans which they were compelled to contract, and on which they paid the interest with the product of the profits on the duties which were alienated to them.

It was doubtless the allurement of this means of finance which prolonged the delusion concerning the immense injury which the existence of guilds causes to industry, and concerning the blows which it struck to natural right. That delusion has been carried among some persons to the point of contending that the right of labor is a royal right, one that the Prince could sell and that the subjects ought to purchase. We hasten to place beside this another maxim:

God, by giving to men needs and making them dependent upon the resource of labor, has made the right of labor the property of all men, and that property is primary, the most sacred and most imprescriptible of all.

We regard it as one of the first obligations of our justice, and as an act in every way worthy of our beneficence, to emancipate our subjects from all the restraints which have been laid upon that inalienable right of humanity. Wherefore, we will to abolish the arbitrary institutions which do not permit the indigent to live by their labor; which exclude the sex whose weakness implies greatest needs and fewest resources, and which seem, by condemning it to inevitable misery, to encourage seduction and debauch; which stifle emulation and industry and make useless the talents of those whom circumstances exclude from admission into the guild; which deprive the state and art of all the advantages which foreigners might furnish; which retard the progress of the arts by the difficulties which inventors find multiplied by the guilds, who thus dispute the right to exploit discoveries which they themselves have not made; which, by means of the inordinate expenses artisans are compelled to incur in order to acquire the liberty of labor, by the exactions of all kinds they must endure, by the multiplied penalties for so-called offenses, by expense and extravagance of every sort, by the endless litigations which arise between the different associations because of their respective claims concerning the scope of their exclusive privileges, surcharge industry with an enormous tax, grievous to the subjects and with no corresponding advantage to the state; which, in short, by the facility they afford to members of the guilds to combine among themselves and to compel the poorer members to submit to the rule of the wealthy, become an instrument of monopoly and give rise to schemes whose effect is to increase beyond all natural proportion the price of commodities which are most necessary for the subsistence of the people.

We shall not be deterred in this act of justice by the fear that a multitude of artisans will take advantage of the liberty bestowed upon all and embark in trades of which they are ignorant, and that the public will be inundated with poorly wrought articles. Liberty has not produced such evil effects in places where it has been established for a long time. Laborers in the suburbs and in other privileged places do not work less effectively than those in the interior of Paris. The whole world knows, besides, how illusory is the police of the craft-guilds, so far as concerns the perfection of work done, and that, all the members of the guilds being moved by the esprit de corps to stand by one another, any individual who complains finds himself nearly always condemned, and is harried by prosecution in court after court until he finds the course of justice more intolerable than the object of his complaint.

Those who understand the development of trade know that all important enterprises, whether of traffic or of industry, require the concurrence of two industrial classes, entrepreneurs who advance the raw material and the necessary implements of trade, and simple laborers who work for the account of the first for wages agreed upon. Herein lies the real distinction between entrepreneurs or masters and laborers or journeymen; it is based in the nature of things and does not depend on the arbitrary institution of corporations. Surely, those who embark their capital in a business have the greatest interest to entrust their material only to good workmen; and there is no ground for fear that they will take the risk of employing poor workmen who can only mutilate their merchandise and drive away their purchasers. And it must be presumed, as well, that entrepreneurs will not put their fortunes into a business about which they do not know enough to be able to choose good workmen and to oversee their labor. We have no fear then, that the suppression of apprenticeships, of journeymen and master pieces, will expose the public to unacceptable service.

Nor do we fear that the sudden influx of a multitude of new workmen will ruin the older ones, and give a disastrous shock to business.

In places where business is freest, the number of merchants and laborers of all kinds is limited always, and necessarily in proportion to the need, that is to say, to consumption. It will not pass that proportion in places where liberty is restored. No new entrepreneur will risk his fortune by sacrificing his capital in a venture where success is doubtful, and where he has reason to fear the competition of all the masters at present established in the enjoyment of the advantage of a settled business and patronage.

The masters who today compose the guilds, by losing the exclusive privilege they have as sellers, will profit as buyers by the suppression of the exclusive privilege of all other guilds. The artisans will profit by the advantage of not being dependent, in the fabrication of their articles, upon the masters of many other corporations, each of which claims the privilege of furnishing some indispensable part. The merchants will gain the privilege of selling all the assortments accessory to their chief trade. All will profit especially by being independent of the leaders and officials of their guild, and in having no longer to pay the fees of frequent visits, in having release from a multitude of contributions for wasteful or prejudicial expenses, costs of ceremonies, banquets, conventions, law suits, all as frivolous in their object as they are ruinous by their multiplicity.

In suppressing the guilds for the general advantage of our subjects, we owe it to their legitimate creditors who have entered into contracts with them in the period of their authorized existence to provide for the security of their credits.

The debts of the guilds are of two classes; the one arise from loans made by the guilds, the amounts of which have been turned into our royal treasury for the acquisition of the offices created and now abolished; the other arise from loans they were authorized to make in order to meet their own expenses of all kinds.

The taxes alienated to these offices, and the fees the guilds have been authorized to collect, have been devoted hitherto to the payment of the interest on the debts of the first class, and even in part to the repayment of the capital. The amount of the same profits will continue to accumulate in our accounts, and the same fees will be collected in our name, to be devoted to the payment of interest and capital of these debts until they are wholly discharged. The part of their revenue which has been used by the guilds for their private expenses, being now released, will serve to augment the sinking fund which we design for the repayment of the capitals concerned.

With regard to the debts of the second class, by the reckoning we have secured of the condition of the guilds in our good city of Paris, we are assured that the amounts they have in bank, or which are due to them, and the chattels they hold and which their suppression will make subject to sale, will be sufficient to discharge what remains to be paid of those debts; and if they are not sufficient, we will provide the balance.

We believe we thus render all justice due the guilds; for we think we ought not repay to their members the taxes required of them from reign to reign, for the right of confirmation or enjoyment. The object of those taxes, which frequently did not come into the treasury of our predecessors, has been attained by the enjoyment the guilds had of their privileges during the reign under which the taxes were paid.

The privilege had to be renewed in each reign. We have restored to our people the sums our predecessors were accustomed to collect for their enjoyment; but we have not renounced the right, inalienable from our sovereignty, of summoning for examination the privileges too readily granted by our predecessors, and of refusing them confirmation if we judge them prejudicial to the welfare of the state and contrary to the rights of our other subjects.

It is for this reason that we have determined not to confirm them, and to revoke expressly the privileges accorded by our predecessors to guilds of merchants and artisans, and to pronounce that revocation general throughout our kingdom, because we owe the same justice to all our subjects.

But that same justice requires that at the moment when the suppression shall be effected provision be made for the payment of their debts, and since the explanations we have requested of the condition of those in the different cities of our provinces have not yet been furnished, we have decided to suspend, by a separate article, the application of our present edict to the guilds of the provincial cities until we shall have taken the necessary measures to provide for the discharge of their debts.

We regret that we are forced to except, for the present, from the liberty we are giving to all kinds of business and industry, the guilds of barbers, wig-makers, and bath-keepers, which institutions differ from other bodies of the same kind, in that the masterships of these callings were created by virtue of offices, the revenue from which has been received in our casual revenue, with the privilege extended to the officials of retaining their ownership by the payment of 1 per cent. We are compelled to defer the emancipation of this kind of industry until we may make arrangements for the extinction of those offices, and we will do this as soon as the condition of our finances will permit.

Certain vocations are susceptible of abuse and affect the confidence of the public, or the general police of the state, or even the safety and life of men: these trades require a surveillance and special precaution on the part of the public authority. These vocations are pharmacy, gold-smithing, and printing. The rules to which these have been subject are parts of the general system of craft-guilds, and without doubt, in that respect, they ought to be revised; but the special features of that reform, the arrangements which it will be best to preserve or to change are objects so important as to demand careful examination and reflection. And while we reserve the right to make known later our intentions in the matter of the rules to be fixed for the practice of these trades, we believe that, for the present, they should not be changed from their existing state.

In assuring to business and industry entire liberty and the full competition it should enjoy, we will take such measures as the preservation of public order may require, in order that those who follow the different crafts, arts and trades may be known and established, at the same time, under the protection and the discipline of the police.

To this end, the merchants and artisans, their names, residence and employment will be exactly recorded. They will be grouped, not on the basis of their vocations, but according to the quarter where they have their domicile. And the officials of the guilds abolished will be replaced advantageously by syndics established in each quarter or arrondissement, to guard public order, to report to the magistrates charged with the police, and to transmit their orders.

All the guilds have numerous law suits: all litigation which the corporations have among themselves will be quashed because of the reform of the exclusive rights they claimed. If, on the dissolution of corporations and guilds, it is found that some cases have been begun and prosecuted in their name which present objects of permanent interest, we will provide that these be carried to a final judgment, for the preservation of whatever rights pertain thereunto.

We will provide further that that class of suits at law, which are frequently raised between artisans and those who employ them, concerning the perfection or the price of labor, may be ended by whatever means are most simple and least costly.

For these causes, etc., etc.,

Article I. It shall be free to all persons, of whatever quality and condition they may be, even all foreigners who may not yet have obtained letters of naturalization from us, to embrace and to exercise in all our kingdom, and especially in our good city of Paris, such kind of business and such profession of arts and trades as may seem good to them, even combining many: to this end we have abolished and suppressed, we will to abolish and suppress all corporations and guilds of merchants and artisans, as well as masterships and craft-guilds. We abrogate all privileges, statutes and regulations given to the said corporations and guilds, by reason of which none of our subjects may be annoyed in the prosecution of his business and his trade, for any cause or under any pretext whatsoever.

Article II. And it will be required, nevertheless, that all those who desire to pursue the said profession or business shall make preliminary declaration before the Lieutenant-General of Police, which will be inscribed in a record provided for that purpose, and will contain their names, surnames and domiciles, the kind of trade or business they purpose to undertake, and in case of change of residence or of business, or of retiring from business or labor, the said merchants or artisans will be required in like manner to make their declaration to the said recorder, free from all expense, on penalty against those who pursue their callings without having made the said declaration, of seizure and confiscation of their articles and merchandises, and a fine of 50 livres.

We exempt, however, from that obligation the present masters of corporations and guilds, who will not be required to make the said declarations except in case of change of domicile, of business, of new combination of trades, or retirement from business and labor.

We exempt further those who are now, or who may wish to become, wholesale merchants, our intention being not to subject such to any rules or formalities to which wholesale dealers have not been subject hitherto.

Article III. The declaration and inscription in the police records, ordained in the preceding article, concerns only those merchants and artisans who labor for their own account and sell to the public. With regard to the common laborers, who are not answerable directly to the public, but to entrepreneurs or masters, for whose account they work, the said entrepreneurs or masters will be required, on every requisition, to submit to the Lieutenant-General of Police a statement containing the name, domicile and kind of work of each of them.

Article IV. We do not intend, further, to include in the dispositions effected by articles I. and II. the vocations of pharmacy, gold-smithing, printing and book-selling, with regard to which there will be no innovation until we may enact for their control whatever pertains thereunto.

Article V. We exempt in like manner from the provisions of the said articles I. and II. of the present edict the guilds of master barbiers-perruquiers-étuvistes in the places where their business is exercised until otherwise ordained by us.

Article VI. We will that the present masters of the guilds of butchers, bakers and others whose trade has to do with the daily subsistence of our subjects may not abandon their business within one year after the declaration which they will be required to make before the Lieutenant-General of Police that they intend to withdraw from their business and trade, on penalty of 500 livres fine, and heavier punishment if it befall.

Article VII. Merchants and artisans who are obliged to keep a record of the names of those persons from whom they buy certain commodities, such as silver-smiths, haberdashers, second-hand dealers and others, will be required to abide faithfully by those records, and to submit them to the officials of police on the first requisition.

Article VIII. Any drugs, the use of which may be dangerous, shall not be sold except by apothecaries or by merchants who shall obtain special written permission from the Lieutenant-General of Police, and besides, shall be required to inscribe in a record, signed by the Lieutenant-General of Police, the names, rank and residence of the persons to whom they may wish to sell them, under penalty of 1000 livres fine, even of extraordinary prosecution, according to the requirements of the case.

Article IX. Such arts and trades as may occasion in their operation dangers or exceptional inconvenience, either to the public or to private individuals, will continue to be subject to police regulations, made or to be made, in order to preclude those dangers and inconveniences.

Article X. Arrondissements will be formed in the different quarters of the cities of our kingdom, and especially in our good city of Paris, in each of which a syndic and two assistants will be appointed by the Lieutenant-General of Police, for the first year only, and after the registration and then upon the execution of the present edict; afterward, the said syndics and assistants shall be chosen annually by ballot by the merchants and artisans of the said arrondissement, in an assembly held for that purpose in the house of and in the presence of a commissioner appointed by the Lieutenant-General of Police; which commissioner shall draw up an official report free of expense; then the said syndics and assistants shall take oath before the Lieutenant-General of Police, to exercise supervision over the traders and artisans of their arrondissement without distinction of condition or business, to report to the said Lieutenant-General of Police, to receive and to transmit his orders, and those who are appointed syndics and assistants may not refuse to discharge the functions appointed them, nor by reason of the same may they demand or receive from the said merchants or artisans any sum, either as a present, by virtue of their honors, or as an exaction: we expressly forbid this on penalty of the law on malversation of public moneys.

Article XI. Law suits which arise because of bad workmanship or defects in finished goods will be brought before the Lord Lieutenant-General of Police, to whom we delegate exclusive jurisdiction, in order that, on the agreement of experts commissioned for that purpose by him, immediate judgment may be had, without cost, and in final resort, except in case the demand for indemnity exceds the sum of 100 livres; in which case the matter will be tried in the ordinary form.

Article XII. In like manner there will be brought before the Lord Lieutenant-General of Police, for immediate judgment, without cost and in last resort, up to the amount of 100 livres, the law suits which may arise over the execution of engagements of time, apprentice contracts and agreements made by the masters and the laborers working for them, relative to that labor; and in case the sum at issue exceeds the value of 100 livres, they will be tried in the ordinary form.

Article XIII. We expressly forbid wardens or officials in charge of corporations or guilds to make hereafter any visits, inspections, seizures; to institute any action in the name of the said guilds; to convoke, or to assist to convoke any assembly under any pretext whatever, even under the pretext of acts of fraternities, which custom we abolish; and in general, to discharge any function in the capacity of wardens, and especially to demand or to receive any sum from members of their guilds, under any pretext whatever, on penalty of the law respecting malversation of public moneys, excepting, however, such sums as may be due to us for the taxes of the members of the said corporations and guilds, and the collection of these sums, both for the current year and what remains to be collected for preceding years, shall be made and continued in the usual form until payment is complete.

Article XIV. We forbid in like manner all masters, journeymen, laborers and apprentices of the said corporations and guilds to form any association or assembly among themselves under any pretext whatever. Wherefore, we have abolished and suppressed, do abolish and suppress, all fraternities which may have been established either by the masters of corporations and guilds or by journeymen and laborers in the arts and trades, even though set up by the statutes of the said corporations and guilds or by all other private claims, or even by letters-patent from us or our predecessors.

Article XV. With regard to the chapels erected on account of the said fraternities, endowments of the same and property included in the endowments; we will that provision for their employment be made by the bishops of the dioceses, in whatever manner they may deem most useful as well as to acquit the endowments; and letters patent will be drawn up, addressed to our court of parlement, in accordance with the decrees of the bishops.

Article XVI. The edict of the month of November, 1563, establishing consular jurisdiction in our good city of Paris, and the declaration of March 18, 1728, will be executed, as to the election of Consular Magistrates, in all that is not contrary to the present edict. Wherefore, we will that the presiding Consular Magistrates of the said city may be required to summon and assemble, three days before the expiration of their year, merchants to the number of sixty, citizens of the said city, provided that not more than five from each of the three guilds not suppressed may be summoned, apothecaries, gold-smiths and printer-booksellers, and not more than twenty-five appointed from among those who follow the vocations and business of dry goods, groceries, haberdashery, furs, hosiery, and wine selling, whether they conduct these trades singly or combine with them other branches of trade or of arts and commerce, amongst whom will be admitted by preference the wardens, syndics and assistants of the three guilds not suppressed and also those who are exercising, or who may exercise the functions of syndics or assistants of merchants or artisans in the various arrondissements of the said city; and with regard to those whom it may be necessary to add in order to fill out the number of sixty, they may be summoned up to the number of twenty by the said magistrates and consuls, from merchants and business men or other prominent bourgeois who are versed in business affairs; these sixty, together with the five Consular Magistrates presiding, and no others, thirty-two of them choosing, shall proceed, in the form and according to the provisions decreed by the said edict and the said declaration, to elect new magistrates and consuls; these shall take the oath of office in the great hall of our parlement in the accustomed manner.

Article XVII. All law suits now pending, in whatever court, between the said corporations and guilds, arising out of their claims or privileges or any other pretense whatever, shall be terminated by virtue of the present edict.

We forbid all gardes-jurés who have power of attorney, and all other agents whatever of the said corporations and guilds, to take any action by reason of the said suits, on pain of nullity and of answering in their person and private name for all costs which may be incurred. And with regard to suits resulting from seizures of chattels and merchandises, or whatever may have been given in place of them, we will that they in like manner be and remain terminated, and that the said chattels and merchandises be returned to those from whom they were seized, by virtue of a plain receipt which they shall give to the persons who happen to be in charge of the goods or acting as depositaries; reserving the provision for costs incurred until the day appointed for payment shall be set by the Lieutenant-General of Police, whom we appoint to this end, at which time the restitutions, damages, interests and costs which may be due to private individuals shall be taken from the sums belonging to the said guilds, if they are sufficient to cover the said amounts; if they are not, other provision will be made by us.

Article XVIII. With regard to the law suits of the said corporations and guilds which involve landed property, sites, payments on arrears of profits and other objects of like nature, we reserve to ourselves the right to provide the means of securing prompt investigation and trial by the courts where they are now on the docket.

Article XIX. We will that, within the space of three months, all wardens, syndics, and magistrates, both those who are now presiding and those who are about to relinquish their offices, as well as those who have not yet made their reports of their administration, be required to submit them, namely, in our good city of Paris, to the Lieutenant-General of Police, and in the provinces to commissioners whom we shall appoint for that purpose, in order that writs and revisions may be executed in the ordinary form, and constraints issued for the payment of the balance as shall be enacted by us, in order that all sums arising may be used to discharge the debts of the said guilds.

Article XX. To the end of providing for the payment of the debts of the said guilds of the city of Paris and for securing the claims of their creditors, there will be placed, without delay, in the hands of the Lieutenant-General of Police, schedules of the said debts, of payments made, of what remains to be paid, of means on hand for their payment, both fixed real estate and property and chattels and accounts which may happen to belong to them. All those who claim to be creditors of the said guilds will be required in like manner, within three months from the day of publication of the present edict, to submit to the Lieutenant-General of Police the titles of their credits, or certified copies of the same, in order that provision for their payment may be assured in whatever sums may belong to them.

Article XXI. The product of duties imposed by the kings, our predecessors, on different materials and merchandises, the collection and control of which have been granted to some of the corporations and guilds of the city of Paris, as well as the profits which have been assigned to them through the purchase of offices created at various times, and which have been included in the list of charges upon our finances, will continue to be exclusively devoted to the payment of arrears and to the payment of the capital of the loans made by the said guilds. We will that any sum in excess, arising from these products, above what will be necessary to discharge the arrears, as well as the entire saving resulting either from the diminution in the cost of collection or from the extinction of the expenses of the guilds which were taken out of these products, or from the diminution of interest charges because of successive reimbursements, be used as a sinking fund for the entire extinction of the capital of the said loans; and to this end a particular bank will be designated by us, under the inspection of the Lieutenant-General of Police, into which will be turned annually the amount of the said profits as the product of the said administrations, to be used only for the payment of arrearages and the repayment of capital.

Article XXII. Proceedings will be brought before the Lieutenant-General of Police for the sale of the land and other real estate as well as of the chattels of the said corporations and guilds, the product of which shall be used in the discharge of their debts, as has been enacted by article XX. herein. And in case the product of the said sale exceeds, for any corporation or guild, the amount of its debts, both to us and to private individuals, the said excess shall be divided in equal portions among the present masters of the said corporation or guild.

Article XXIII. With regard to the debts of corporations or guilds established in our provincial cities, we enact that, in the said space of three months, those who claim to be creditors of the said corporations or guilds be required to put into the hands of our Lieutenant-General of Police the titles of their said credits, or summarized schedules of the same, in order that the amount of the said debts may be determined by us and provision be made for their payment; and until we have taken the necessary measures to accomplish that end, we suspend in our provincial cities the suppression ordained by the present edict.

Article XXIV. We have made void and do make void by the present edict, all edicts, declarations, letters-patent, writs, statutes and regulations contrary to this present edict.

So given and commanded, etc., etc.

DECLARATION OF THE KING