ound inadequate to the
purpose, and the minister, having failed to control them, was
dismissed. Necker, his rival and obvious successor, was sent out of
the way, and the Archbishop of Toulouse, afterwards of Sens, who was
appointed in his place, got rid of the Assembly. There was nothing
left to fall back upon but the dreaded States-General. Lafayette had
demanded them at the meeting of the Notables, and the demand was now
repeated far and wide.

On August 8, 1788, the king summoned the States-General for the
following year, to the end, as he proclaimed, that the nation might
settle its own government in perpetuity. The words signified that the
absolute monarchy of 1788 would make way for a representative monarchy
in 1789. In what way this was to be done, and how the States would be
constituted, was unknown. The public were invited to offer
suggestions, and the press was practically made free for publications
that were not periodical. Necker, the inevitable minister of the new
order of things, was immediately nominated to succeed the Archbishop,
and the funds rose 30 per cent in one day. He was a foreigner,
independent of French tradition and ways of thought, who not only
stood aloof from the Catholics, as a Genevese, but also from the
prevailing freethinkers, for Priestley describes him as nearly the
only believer in religion whom he found in intellectual society at
Paris. He was the earliest foreign statesman who studied and
understood the modern force of opinion; and he identified public
opinion with credit, as we should say, with the city. He took the
views of capitalists as the most sensitive record of public
confidence; and as Paris was the headquarters of business, he
contributed, in spite of his declared federalism, to that predominance
of the centre which became fatal to liberty and order.

Necker was familiar with the working of republican institutions, and
he was an admirer of the British model; but the king would not hear of
going to school to the people whom he had so recently defeated, and
who owed their disgrace as much to political as to military
incapacity. Consequently Necker repressed his zeal in politics, and
was not eager for the States-General. They would never have been
wanted, he said, if he had been called to succeed Calonne, and had had
the managing of the Notables. He was glad now that they should serve
to bring the entire property of the country, on equal terms, under the
tax-gatherer, and