slightest idea of the high importance of royal and princely extravagance and splendour. Even the parliament of Besançon treated his measures with insolence and contempt: it would by no means consent to the renunciation of those unreasonable privileges and exemptions which its members enjoyed, and Turgot was finally obliged to give way (Feb. 1776). The declaimers in the parliament of Paris now assailed him with incredible violence these men, who were inaccessible to all ideas of improvement, were filled with indignation because the minister was desirous of setting some limits to the usurpations which had for centuries been regarded as sacred, and were founded upon feudal rights and privileges. They deemed it unbecoming that he should attempt to relieve the burthens of the citizens and peasants, who were much more heavily taxed in comparison than persons of higher rank, and put an end to the insolence of the privileged classes. The attorney-general Seguier, in his speech in parliament, declared it to be quite intolerable that parchments and seals should yield to common sense; councillor Pomerany in his address compared the economists, at whose head stood Turgot, with the jesuits, which was the most deadly object of hatred a jansenist could suggest. It was therefore no wonder that parliament opposed the registration of these seven edicts, although Turgot at first completely kept the seventh out of view, which was the one that appeared to be most obnoxious, as interfering most directly with the interests of the members of the parliament.

Of all the edicts which Turgot laid before the parliament for registration, it accepted only that by which the tolls at Poissy were abolished, together with another concerning the trade in tallow, and a third on rabbit preserves, as if it designed to show its contempt for the minister; and if therefore the liberal government wished to carry these measures, they must necessarily have recourse to the unconstitutional means employed in the times of Louis XV. The parliament was accordingly summoned to Versailles, a bed of justice was held, and the parliament was compelled to register the five remaining edicts on the express command of the king. The parliament however had scarcely returned to Paris when the war was commenced in the usual form, and this war ended as it must have been expected to end under a young and weak-minded king, who was only aided and advised by an old and frivolous witling. The king, surrounded by

flatterers, and entreated by his wife, his brothers and the whole court, who knew nothing it is true of business, but were apprehensive of moral reformers in the persons of the ministers, against his judgement and most unwillingly sacrificed both his ministers, of whose integrity and knowledge of business he was fully convinced, and whose desires to alleviate the burthens of his people he shared. In the beginning of May Turgot and Malesherbes left the ministry; St. Germain remained eighteen months longer, till October 1777.

§ IV.

NORTH AMERICAN WAR TILL 1781.

After St. Germain's removal, the war department was undertaken by prince de Montbarrey, one of the high nobility, who had previously shared the office of minister with St. Germain. He lost no time in reducing everything to the old footing. The department of foreign affairs was committed to count de Vergennes, who conducted the business of the state with great skill, but there was great difficulty in finding a suitable person to undertake the financial affairs of the kingdom. Vergennes, who was an experienced statesman, found himself however in no small difficulty, because he had resolved to avail himself of the disputes between England and her colonies to blot out the disgrace entailed by the peace of Paris, and again by a naval war to revive the honour of the nation, which had been tarnished in the seven years' war by its campaigns on land. This could not be accomplished in a country like France, where the whole system of finance was in confusion and the credit of the country completely destroyed, unless the whole system of taxation was entirely altered as Turgot had proposed, or at least the credit of the country so far restored as to render it possible to raise a loan. The former had been attempted by Turgot; the realization of the latter was entrusted to Necker, a banker in Paris, who was willing to make the attempt. Necker was a partner in a large banking-house in Paris, and had speculated for himself with great success; he now therefore offered to undertake the management of the finances of the nation without either salary or title. He thought with reason, that if he succeeded in the

management of the public treasury, the reputation of his integrity, financial knowledge and ability (even in the theoretical part of the science) would secure him universal confidence. After Turgot's removal, Clugny de Nuis was placed at the head of the department of finance, but he soon had recourse to timid and insignificant means of supply, such as his discount-office and lotteries, and only held the office six months, when he was removed by death. On his death Taboureau received the title of comptroller-general of finance, because Necker, as a protestant, could not be appointed to this office; but the latter in reality managed all the business of the department under the modest title of a director of finance.

With his numerous merits, extensive knowledge and admirable qualities, Necker combined that unlimited vanity, pretension and self-complacency, which is usually regarded as the reproach of a Genevese education, or rather of the education and training of all those who merely seek and love virtue as a means of worldly reputation and success. Self-complacency and vanity were hereditary in the Necker family, and Madame de Staël has idolized her father in her writings as much as he was grossly abused and calumniated by the emigrants, and by all those who viewed affairs from the same standing-point as they did; both were wrong. It is however very difficult to reconcile the very different opinions entertained respecting his merits as a statesman. He has given a full account of his financial principles, for he has written two books upon the subject, which it is easy to compare. His father was a celebrated professor of law in Geneva, who, among others, gave instructions in German law to the landgrave of Hesse Cassel, because even now all persons of distinction and fashion would much rather speak fashionable French than vulgar German. He became first a clerk, then a partner, in the great banking-house of Thélusson and Co. in Paris; whilst there he realized millions by his own skill, and gained great reputation and credit; and after his retirement from business he entered the field as a writer on questions of political economy and finance. The persons who talked upon these subjects at court with the queen and the ladies and gentlemen of her suite were in reality wholly ignorant of the subject, but they professed to be extremely angry with Turgot because he insisted on a free trade in corn: it was quite enough to determine their opposition to the measure that the word free was introduced,

and nothing could have been more agreeable to their wishes than that a liberal writer like Necker should have come forward as an opponent to Turgot. Necker took up the gauntlet on this question, and wrote against Turgot's principles of a free trade in corn in an essay 'Sur la Législation et le Commerce des Grains,' which was highly praised by the opponents of Turgot, who was at that time minister of finance, although the author either completely misunderstood or misrepresented him in one of the leading points of the question. Necker's whole reasoning proceeds upon the principle that Turgot had sanctioned the principle of a free trade in corn with other nations, whilst in reality he only maintained the propriety of a free internal trade. The authors of the innumerable French Mémoires have taken a world of pains to determine who the person was who first brought this citizen banker to the notice of the court, and those historians who delight to entertain their readers with anecdotes and wit have collected a great variety of stories on the point: most of them say that he was recommended to the queen as a man who knew how to raise money by the abbé Vermont, on the authority of the son of a great iron-merchant in Versailles, who was afterwards created a marquis. We do not pretend to give any opinion as to who recommended him to the queen, nor why she interfered in the affair; certain it is that Necker's moral, pedantic and systematic manners, which were of the Genevese stamp, were as disagreeable to her as to her husband, because she contrasted them with the courtly manners of Turgot, which were smooth and gentle, and such as were acquired by a familiarity with the court from his youth. Necker moreover did everything which could be expected in the then existing circumstances; he raised the necessary means for a war which Vergennes desired for political reasons, and for which the whole French youth of the higher circles earnestly longed, from an inspiration for glory and for a constitution such as that which Montesquieu described, or for a species of public and domestic life such as Rousseau and all the fashionable sentimental writers delineated.

In the Parisian saloons of that period there reigned a general inspiration for the progress of humanity, for the beau idéal of social life, as there now prevails in the same place the spirit of speculation and politics of a degrading description, a love of distinction and boasting of wealth and rank. The young men

belonging to the families of the high French nobility shared in this enthusiasm, which was worthy to be ranked with the knightly spirit of the best times of the middle ages. The ladies also bestowed the rewards of praise and love upon those alone who exhibited the highest enthusiasm for the rights of the people and human freedom, as the ladies of the south of France formerly distributed the rewards of knightly valour at tilts and tournaments. The most of those knights who were the inspired advocates and champions of freedom, in the decennium immediately preceding that in which the revolution took place, afterwards became fanatical opponents of the same ideas which they had lauded and disseminated in their youth, because the reality did not correspond with their ideal, which, if they had had any particle of common sense, they ought to have foreseen. Only one among them continued to dream the American dream of his youth to a very advanced age and carried it with him to the grave. This noble enthusiast was the son of the marquis de la Fayette, who fell in the battle of Minden: he was a man who could never be brought to that point at which egotists speedily arrive, who regard human nature as evil because men are corrupt, and freedom a dream because millions are incapable and unworthy of its enjoyment. He himself gives us a very striking trait of his inborn admiration of the love of independence and resistance to oppression, in an anecdote of his boyhood; he tells us that when his master required him, as an exercise in composition, to give some account of the horse, he never forgot to mention the fact, that it was characteristic of the animal to rear on being touched with the whip of the rider.

La Fayette, when sixteen years old, was married on the 11th of April 1774, to the second daughter of the count d'Ayen, who died in 1824 as duke de Noailles. This occurred at the very moment when the royal assent to the Boston Port Bill had made a war between England and North America unavoidable. His own patrimony and the dowry which he received with his wife made him one of the richest of the French nobility, and his birth entitled him to one of the first places at court, where he appeared as a captain of cavalry. The Americans had no sooner formed the design of declaring themselves independent of the mother-country, which they carried into effect in the following year, than he expressed his opinions so openly and strongly in their favour in the circle of the princes and the queen, that