DISPUTES BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS AND THE CLERGY.

About the latter end of November, the Saxon minister at Ratisbon delivered to the diet a new and ample memorial, explaining the lamentable state of that electorate, and imploring afresh the assistance of the empire. The king of Prussia had also addressed a letter to the diet, demanding succour of the several states, agreeable to their guarantees of the treaties of Westphalia and Dresden; but the minister of Mentz, as director of the diet, having refused to lay it before that assembly, the minister of Brandenburgh ordered it to be printed, and sent to his court for further instructions. In the meantime his Prussian majesty thought proper to intimate to the king and senate of Poland, that should the Russian troops be permitted to march through that kingdom, they might expect to see their country made a scene of war and desolation. In France, the prospect of a general and sanguinary war did not at all allay the disturbance which sprang from the dissension between the clergy and parliament, touching the bull Unigenitus. The king being again brought over to the ecclesiastical side of the dispute, received a brief from the pope, laying it down as a fundamental article, that whosoever refuses to submit to the bull Unigenitus, is in the way of damnation; and certain cases are specified, in which the sacraments are to be denied. The parliament of Paris, considering this brief or bull as a direct attack upon the rights of the Gallican church, issued an arret or decree, suppressing the said bull; reserving to themselves the right of providing against the inconveniences with which it might be attended, as well as the privilege to maintain in their full force the prerogatives of the crown, the power and jurisdiction of the bishops, the liberties of the Gallican church, and the customs of the realm. The king, dissatisfied with their interposition, declared his design to hold a bed of justice in person at the palace. Accordingly, on the twelfth day of November, the whole body of his guards, amounting to ten thousand men, took post in the city of Paris; and next day the king repaired with the usual ceremony to the palace, where the bed of justice was held: among other regulations, an edict was issued for suppressing the fourth and fifth chambers of inquests, the members of which had remarkably distinguished themselves by their opposition to the bull Unigenitus.