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Updated: May 27, 2025
Morris's eye. But whatever their opinion of his talents, Monsieur Necker's cordiality was above reproach, and it was with elaborate politeness that he presented the Americans to Madame Necker.
It was enough for Napoleon to know that she did not flatter him; therefore he wished her out of the way. Madame de Staël was for a time completely overcome by Necker's death. She wore his picture on her person as long as she lived. Only once did she part with it, and then she imagined it might console her daughter in her illness.
Ouen, for public opinion, bringing its weight to bear upon the king's will, to recall him to office. M. de Maurepas was laughing in that little closet at Versailles which he hardly quitted any more: "The man impossible to replace is still unborn," he would say to those who were alarmed at M. Necker's resignation.
Still the current ran stronger and stronger; Petion made a brilliant oration in favor of the report, and Necker's influence and experience were gradually worn away. Mingled with the financial argument was a strong political plea. The National Assembly had determined to confiscate the vast real property of the French Church, the pious accumulations of fifteen hundred years.
Price should think fit, a few years hence, to favor us with an estimate of the population of France, he will hardly be able to make up his tale of thirty millions of souls, as computed in 1789, or the Assembly's computation of twenty-six millions of that year, or even M. Necker's twenty-five millions in 1780.
Unluckily the professed ministers of finance, Joly de Fleury and his successor, D'Ormesson, were as ignorant of that great subject as himself, and, within two years after Necker's retirement, their mismanagement had brought the kingdom to the very verge of bankruptcy. D'Ormesson was dismissed, and for many days it was anxiously deliberated in the palace by whom he should be replaced.
Jacques Necker was well known in Paris as a hard-headed Swiss banker, and Madame Necker's receptions were attended by the chief personages of the bourgeois society of Paris. He borrowed 400,000,000 francs from his banker friends, reformed the collection of taxes, reduced expenditures, and carefully audited the accounts. In 1781 he issued a report or "Account Rendered of the Financial Condition."
At length he said, 'I fear I have been somewhat too harsh with this young man . . . . But no matter, it will prevent others from troubling me. These people calumniate everything I do. They do not understand me, Duroc; their place is not in France. How can Necker's family be for the Bourbons, whose first duty, if ever they returned to France, would be to hang them all."
Behind a political reform there was a social revolution, for the only liberty that could avail was liberty founded on equality. Malouet, who was at this moment Necker's best adviser, said to him: "You have made the Commons equal in influence to the other orders. Another revolution has to follow, and it is for you to accomplish it the levelling of onerous privilege."
Malouet had tendered a clause saving the royal power; but it was decided not to put it, lest it should be refused. Mirabeau, in whose eyes the decree of the 17th portended civil war, now voted, reluctantly, with the rest. Whilst the Assembly held its improvised and informal meeting at Versailles, the king sat in council at Marly on Necker's magnanimous proposal.
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