utions of the assembly of Vizille through France
was immediate. They were simple, direct, and voiced the general
feeling; they also indicated that the moment had come for interfering
in the chronic mismanagement of affairs. So irresistible was their
force that Lomenie de Brienne and the King accepted them with hardly a
struggle. The minister was now at the end of his borrowing powers and
in the month of August his tenure of power came to a close. Before
{46} leaving office he suspended payments, and issued a decree
convoking the States-General for the 1st of May, 1789. He was
succeeded by Necker.

It was unfortunate for the Bourbon monarchy that at this great crisis a
king and a minister should have come together, both lacking initiative,
both lacking courage, and yet not even sympathetic, but, on the
contrary, lacking mutual confidence and refusing one another mutual
support. And while Louis lacked executive vigour, so Necker tended
always to lose himself in figures, in details, in words, in fine
sentiments, and to neglect the essential for the unimportant. He was
well intentioned but narrow, and merely followed the current of events.
From all parts of France advice and representations reached him as to
the conditions under which the States-General should be convoked.
Their last meeting had been held as far back as 1614, so that there was
naturally much uncertainty on questions of procedure. Partly to clear
this, partly to find some support for his own timidity, Necker called
the Notables together again. They met in November and helped to settle
the conditions under which the elections {47} to the States-General and
their convocation should take place.

The old constitutional theory of the States-General was that it was an
assembly of the whole French nation, represented by delegates, and
divided into three classes. Thus it was tribal in that it comprised
every Frenchman within its scope, and feudal in that it formed the
caste distinctions, noble, clergy, people. In other words it afforded
little ground for comparison with the English Parliament; the point at
which it approached it nearest being in the matter of the power to vote
the taxation levied by the Crown; but this power the States-General had
lost so far back as the 15th century.

This fundamental conception entailed another, which was that the
delegates of the nation were not members of a parliament or debating
assembly, but were mere mandatories