XI
I have just said that none foresaw the direction in which the great events now commencing were likely to run. That direction was mainly to be influenced by the conduct and character of the sovereign, but it was also, in some degree, to be affected by the conduct and character of the statesman to whom the destinies of France were for the moment confided.
M. Necker belonged to a class of men not uncommon in our own time. His abilities, though good, were not of the first order; his mind had been directed to one particular branch of business; and, as is common with persons who have no great genius and one specialty, he took the whole of government to be that part which he best understood. Accordingly, what he now looked to, and that exclusively, was balancing the receipts and expenditure of the State. To do this, it was necessary to tax the nobility and clergy; and the class through whose aid he could best hope to achieve such a task was the middle-class, or “tiers-état.” For this reason, when it had been decided to convoke the States-General, and it became necessary to fix the proportionate numbers by which each of the three orders (viz. the nobility, clergy, middle-class, or “tiers-état,”) which composed the States-General, was to be represented, M. Necker determined that the sole order of the “tiers-état” should have as many representatives as the two other orders conjointly; thinking in this way to give the middle-class a greater authority, and to counterbalance the want of rank in its individual members, by their aggregate superiority in numbers.
But when M. Necker went thus far he should have gone farther, and defined in what manner the three orders should vote, and what power they should separately exercise. This precaution, however, he did not take; and therefore, as soon as the States-General assembled, there instantly arose the question as to whether the three orders were to prove the validity of their elections together as members of one assembly, or separately as members of three distinct assemblies. This question, in point of fact, determined whether the three orders were to sit and vote together, or whether each order was to sit and vote apart; and after M. Necker’s first regulation it was clear that, in one case, the order of the Commons would predominate over all opposition; and that, in the other, it would be subordinate to the two rival orders. A struggle then naturally commenced.