parliament, right of voting supplies, of initiating legislation,
of revising the constitution, responsibility of ministers,
double representation of the Commons at the States-General. All these concessions were acts of the Crown,
yielding to dictates of policy more than to popular demand.
It is said that power is an object of such ardent desire to
man, that the voluntary surrender of it is absurd in
psychology and unknown in history. Lewis XVI. no
doubt calculated the probabilities of loss and gain, and
persuaded himself that his action was politic even more
than generous. The Prussian envoy rightly described
him in a despatch of July 31, 1789. He says that the
king was willing to weaken the executive at home, in
order to strengthen it abroad; if the ministers lost by a
better regulated administration, the nation would gain by
it in resource, and a limited authority in a more powerful
state seemed preferable to absolute authority which was
helpless from its unpopularity and the irreparable disorder
of finance. He was resolved to submit the arbitrary
government of his ancestors to the rising forces of the
day. The royal initiative was pushed so far on the way
to established freedom that it was exhausted, and the
rest was left to the nation. As the elections were not
influenced, as the instructions were not inspired, the
deliberations were not guided or controlled. The king
abdicated before the States -General. He assigned so
much authority to the new legislature that none remained
with the Crown, and its powers, thus practically suspended,
were never recovered. The rival classes, that only the
king could have reconciled and restrained, were abandoned
to the fatal issue of a trial of strength.
In 1786 the annual deficit amounted to between four and five millions, and the season for heroic remedies had evidently come. The artful and evasive confusion of accounts that shrouded the secret could not be maintained, and the minister of finance, Calonne, convoked the Notables for February 1787. The Notables were a selection of important personages, chiefly of the upper order, without legal powers or initiative. It was hoped that they
