would strengthen the hands of the government, and that
what they agreed to would be accepted by the class to
which they belonged. It was an experiment to avert the
evil day of the States-General. For the States-General,
which had not been seen for one hundred and seventy-five
years, were the features of a bygone stage of political life,
and could neither be revived as they once had been, nor
adapted to modern society. If they imposed taxes, they
would impose conditions, and they were an auxiliary who
might become a master. The Notables were soon found
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
