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Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 205. M. Foulon was about this time made paymaster of the army and navy, and was generally credited with ability as a financier; but he was unpopular, as a man of ardent and cruel temper, and was brutally murdered by the mob in one of the first riots of the Revolution. The king. Necker. Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 214. Ibid., p. 217.
He told me he wished Her Majesty to be convinced that he was a Frenchman; that he only desired his country might be governed by salutary laws, and not by the caprice of weak sovereigns, or a vitiated, corrupt Ministry; that the clergy and nobility ought to contribute to the wants of the State equally with every other class of the King's subjects; that when this was accomplished, and abuses were removed, by such a national representation as would enable the Minister, Necker, to accomplish his plans for the liquidation of the national debt, I might assure Her Majesty that both the King and herself would find themselves happier in a constitutional government than they had ever yet been; for such a government would set them free from all dependence on the caprice of Ministers, and lessen a responsibility of which they now experienced the misery; that if the King sincerely entered into the spirit of regenerating the French nation, he would find among the present representatives many members of probity, loyal and honourable in their intentions, who would never become the destroyers of a limited legitimate monarchy, or the corrupt regicides of a rump Parliament, such as brought the wayward Charles the First, of England, to the fatal block.
He would as readily have set up a Red Republic as a constitutional monarchy. His political conduct was guided more by events and circumstances than by any well-conceived idea of what is right and fitting. He was one of those Italian Liberals who might be compared to the Necker of the French Revolution, whilst Mazzini and his followers were the ultra-radicals—the Robespierres of Roman politics.
As regards the main body at court, from the grand dukes, the women, etc., down, he had committed the sin of which Turgot and Necker were guilty when they sought to save France but found that the women, princes, and favorites of poor Louis XVI's family were determined to dip their hands into the state treasury, and were too strong to be controlled.
And when the Commons objected that what was good in times of civil dissension was inapplicable to the Arcadian tranquillity of 1789, the others were not to blame if they treated the argument with contempt. The failure of the conference was followed by an event which confirmed Necker in the belief that he was not waiting in vain. He received overtures from Mirabeau.
It seems strange indeed that in a century in which the universal impulse was toward pleasure, and sameness of personality was visible everywhere, the types of great women showed such an absolute dissimilarity. The contrast between the natural inclinations of Mme. Necker, the wife of the great minister of finance, and the atmosphere in which she lived, makes the study of her a most interesting one.
Such was the disposition of Paris when the court, having established troops at Versailles, Sevres, the Champ de Mars, and Saint Denis, thought itself able to execute its project. It commenced, on the 11th of July, by the banishment of Necker, and the complete reconstruction of the ministry.
The Councils could not legally override the Directory; neither could the Directory veto the decrees of the Councils, nor, by dissolving them, compel an appeal to the country. This defect in the constitution had been clearly pointed out by Necker, and it now drew from Barras the lament:
There is no longer in France clergy, or noblesse, or third estate; the distinction is factitious, merely representative and without real meaning; the monarch speaks, all else are people, and all else obey. "M. Necker does not appear content with this happy state of things.
It was some days before he recovered; and his father-in-law, his wife, and myself were not without hopes that he would see in this an omen to prevent him from persisting any longer in his opposition to the Royal Family. "The effects of the recall of the popular Minister, Necker, did not satisfy the King.
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