these three years saved will scatter their beneficent influence over a
whole century. The French people feel the blessing of having a master
and minister devoted to economy; economy has induced this monarch to
trench upon his own splendor rather than upon his people's subsistence.
He has found in the suppression of a great number of places a resource
for continuing the war without increasing his expenses. He has stripped
himself of the magnificence and pomp of royalty, but he has manned a
navy; he has reduced the number of persons in his private service, but he
has increased that of his vessels. Louis XVI., like a patriotic king,
has shown sufficient firmness to protect M. Necker, a foreigner, without
support or connection at court, who owes his elevation to nothing but his
own merit and the discernment of the sovereign who had sagacity enough to
discover him, and to his wisdom which can appreciate him. It is a noble
example to follow: if we would conquer France, it is on this ground and
with her own weapons that we must fight her: economy and reforms."

It was those reforms, for which the English orator gave credit to
M. Necker and Louis XVI., that rendered the minister's fall more imminent
every day. He had driven into coalition against him the powerful
influences of the courtiers, of the old families whose hereditary
destination was office in the administration, and of the parliament
everywhere irritated and anxious. He had lessened the fortunes and
position of the two former classes, and his measures tended to strip the
magistracy of the authority whereof they were so jealous. "When
circumstances require it," M. Necker had said in the Report, "the
augmentation of imposts is in the hands of the king, for it is the power
to order them which constitutes sovereign greatness;" and, in a secret
Memoire which saw publicity by perfidious means: "The imposts are at
their height, and minds are more than ever turned towards administrative
subjects. The result is a restless and confused criticism which adds
constant fuel to the desire felt by the parliaments to have a hand in the
matter. This feeling on their part becomes more and more manifest, and
they set to work, like all those bodies that wish to acquire power, by
speaking in the name of the people, calling themselves defenders of the
nation's rights; there can be no doubt but that, though they are strong
neither in knowledge nor in pure love for the well-being of