I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

–Edmund Burke, October 1793

Yet at the time of Nicholas, Russia has no more need to copy western courts. Anyway the new democratic system is already analyzed in these terms by Custine: a parliament is the aristocracy of oratory, substituted for the aristocracy of birth: it is the government of the lawyers.