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The so-called �clandestine literature� of the second half of the eighteenth century has for a long time been discussed by historians in an ambiguous tracery of interpretations. Sometimes it is considered as smutty and defamatory, an outlet for low-status authors rejected by a closed literary and philosophical club and consequently treated as unreadable, of little importance and marginal. Sometimes it is used as one of the sources for understanding business at the royal court. Nevertheless, reading clandestine literature opens up many other research possibilities, in particular certain significant phrasal cross-references of a standard political culture in public opinion. This article undertakes an inquiry into the location of the �concept and reality of the French Parlement�, specifically into the remonstrance speeches given clandestinely to great success between the 1770s and 1791, in order to measure the familiar field of speeches of resistance and opposition. Here, parliamentary reality was at the same time both overture and closing credits and the Parlement was more often object than subject. In this context, �remonstrance� is associated in a multilateral way with the culture of French protest, and it is in many respects that the French parliamentary system of the Ancien Régime reveals an original culture of pre-democratic opinion more than any culture bearing within it the roots of the French Revolution and its precursors.
