Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Gallery of Portraits, Vol. 4: With Memoirs
The law-officers of that day did not confine themselves to a mere dry fulfilment of legal functions; there was a traditional taste, a love of polite and classic literature, a cultivation of poetry and eloquence, on which the jurists prided themselves, and which prompted them to seize every opportunity of rivalling the ecclesiastical orators and polite writers of the age. Thus, at the opening of each session, the Avoeat G'e'neral pronounced an inaugurative discourse, which treated rather of points of high morality than law. Daguesseau acquired great fame from these effusions of eloquence. Their titles bespeak what they were: they treat of the Independence of the Advocate the Know ledge of Man of Magnanimity of the Censorship. The highest professions are the most dependent, exclaimed Daguesseau on one of those occasions; he whom the grandeur of his office elevates over other men, soon finds that the first hour of his dignity is the last of his independence. These generous sentiments are strongly contrasted with the despotism of the government and the general servility of the age.
In 1700, Daguesseau was appointed procureur-general, in which capacity he was obliged to form decisions on the gravest questions of state. A learned Memoir, drawn up by him in the year 1700, to prove that no ecclesiastics, not even cardinals, had a right to be exempt from royal jurisdiction, shows his mind already imbued with that jealousy of Papal supremacy which afterwards distinguished him. But his occupations were not confined to legal functions, the admi nistration of that day being accustomed to have recourse, in all dith cult and momentous questions, to the wisdom and authority of the magistracy. Thus Daguesseau was enabled, by directing his atten tion to the state of the hospitals, to remedy the enormous abuses prac tised in them, and to remodel these charitable institutions upon a new and philanthropic system. In the terrible famine of 1709, he was appointed one of the commission to inquire into the distresses of the time. He was the first to foresee the famine ere it arrived, and to recommend the fittest measures for obviating the misery which it menaced.
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