upon the state, and which he alone had managed to find the means of supporting, M. Necker desired peace.  It was for Catholics and philosophers that the honor was reserved of restoring to Protestants the first right of citizens, recognition of their marriages and a civil status for their children.  The court, the parliaments, and the financiers were leagued against M. Necker.  “Who, pray, is this adventurer,” cried the fiery Epremesnil, “who is this charlatan who dares to mete out the patriotism of the French magistracy, who dares to suppose them lukewarm in their attachments and to denounce them to a young king?” The assessment of the twentieths (tax) had raised great storms; the mass of citizens were taxed rigorously, but the privileged had preserved the right of themselves making a declaration of their possessions; a decree of the council ordered verification of the income from properties.  The Parliaments burst out into remonstrances.  “Every owner of property has the right to grant subsidies by himself or by his representatives,” said the Parliament of Paris; “if he do not exercise this right as a member of a national body, it must be reverted to indirectly, otherwise he is no longer master of his own, he is no longer undisturbed owner.”  Confidence in personal declarations, then, is the only indemnity for the right, which the nation has not exercised but has not lost, of itself granting and assessing the twentieths.  A bold principle, even in a free state, and one on which the income-tax rests in England, but an untenable principle, without absolute equality on the part of all citizens and a common right to have their consent asked to the imposts laid upon them.

M. Necker did not belong to the court; he had never lived there, he did not set foot therein when he became minister.  A while ago Colbert and Louvois had founded families and taken rank among the great lords who were jealous of their power and their wealth.  Under Louis XVI., the court itself was divided, and one of the queen’s particular friends, Baron do Besenval, said, without mincing the matter, in his Memoires:  “I grant that the depredations of the great lords who are at the head of the king’s household are enormous, revolting. . . .  Necker has on his side the depreciation into which the great lords have fallen; it is such that they are certainly not to be dreaded, and that their opinion does not deserve to be taken into consideration in any political speculation.”

M. Necker had a regard for public opinion, indeed he attached great importance to it, but he took its influence to be more extensive and its authority to rest on a broader bottom than the court or the parliaments would allow.  “The social spirit, the love of regard and of praise,” said he, “have raised up in France a tribunal at which all men who draw its eyes upon them are obliged to appear:  there public opinion, as from the height of a throne, decrees prizes and crowns, makes and unmakes reputations.