which was at the bottom of his heart. Never did anyone combine, in a more striking manner, prudence in the means with ardor for the end.
M. Necker never adopted a measure of importance without long and serious consideration, in which he consulted alternately his conscience and his judgment, but never his personal interest. To meditate was for him to make an abstraction from himself, and whatever opinion may be formed on his different measures, their origin is to be sought in motives different from those that actuate most men. Scruples were as predominant with him as passions are with others. The extent of his mind and of his imagination sometimes exposed him to the evil of hesitation; and he was particularly alive to self-reproach, to such a degree, indeed, as often to blame himself unjustly. These two noble inconveniences strengthened his attachment to morality: it was in that only that he found decision for the present, and tranquillity for the past. Every impartial man who examines the public conduct of M. Necker in the smallest details will always find it actuated by an impulse of virtue. I do not know whether that is called being no statesman; but, if he is to be blamed on this ground, let the blame be cast on the delicacy of his consciousness: for it was a rule with him that morality is still more necessary in a public than in a private capacity, because the management of extensive and durable interests is more evidently subjected, than that of lighter matters, to the principles of probity implanted in us by the Creator.
During his first administration, when public opinion was not yet perverted by party spirit, and when the business of government proceeded on a regular plan, the admiration inspired by his character was general, and his retirement from office was regarded by all France as a public calamity. Let us stop awhile to examine him in this first ministry, before we proceed to those hard and cruel circumstances which created enmity and ingratitude in the judgment of the people.7
The principles adopted by M. Necker in the management of the finances are so simple that their theory is within the reach of every person, although their application be very difficult. It is easy to say to statesmen “be just and firm,” as to writers “be ingenious and profound”: this advice is perfectly clear, but the qualities which enable us to follow it up are very rare.
M. Necker was persuaded that economy, and publicity,1 the best guarantee of fidelity in our engagements, form the only foundations of order and credit in a great empire. As in his opinion public morality ought not to differ from private, so he conceived that the affairs of the state might, in many respects, be conducted on the same principles as those of each private family. To equalize the receipt and expenditure; to arrive at that desired point rather by a reduction of expense than by an increase of taxation; and, when war unfortunately became necessary, to meet its extra expense by loans, the interest of which should be provided for either by a new tax or by a new retrenchment—such were the great and leading principles from which M. Necker never deviated.
No people can carry on a war without other aid than their ordinary revenue; it becomes therefore indispensable to borrow, that is, to throw on future generations a part of the pressure of a contest supposed to be undertaken for their welfare. We might suppose the existence of an accumulated treasure, such as that which Frederick the Great possessed; but, besides that there was nothing of the kind in France, it is only a conqueror or those who aim at becoming conquerors that deprive their country of the advantages attached to the circulation of money and the maintenance of credit.
Arbitrary governments, whether revolutionary or despotic, have recourse, for their military expenses, to forced loans, extraordinary contributions, or the circulation of paper; for no country either can or ought to make war with its ordinary revenue. Credit is then the true modern discovery which binds a government to its people; it obliges the executive power to treat public opinion with consideration: and, in the same way that trade has had the effect of civilizing nations, credit, which is the offspring of trade, has rendered the establishment of constitutional forms of some kind or another necessary to give publicity to financial transactions and guarantee contracts. How was it practicable to found credit on mistresses, favorites, or ministers, who are in a course of daily change at a royal court? What father of a family would place his fortune in such a lottery?2
Nonetheless, M. Necker was the first and only minister in France who succeeded in obtaining credit without the benefit of any new institution. His name inspired so much confidence that capitalists in various parts of Europe came forward, even to a degree of imprudence, with their funds, reckoning on him as on a government, and forgetting that he could lose his place at any moment. It was customary in England, as in France, to quote him before the Revolution as the best financial head in Europe; and it was considered as a miracle, that war should have been carried on during five years without increasing the taxes, or using other means than providing for the interest of the loans by progressive retrenchments. But when the time came that party spirit perverted everything, his plan of finance was charged with charlatanism—a singular charlatanism, truly; to carry the austerity of private life into the cabinet, and to forgo the pleasure of making friends and partisans by a lavish distribution of the public money! The true judges of the talents and honor of a finance minister are the public creditors.
During M. Necker’s administration, the public funds rose and the interest of money fell, to a degree of which there had been no example in France. The English funds, on the other hand, experienced a considerable fall; and the capitalists of all countries subscribed eagerly to the loans opened at Paris, as if the virtues of an individual could supply the place of the stability of law.
M. Necker has been blamed for the system of loans, as if that system were necessarily ruinous. But what means has England employed to arrive at that degree of wealth which has enabled her to sustain with such vigor twenty-five years of a most expensive war?3 Loans, of which the interest is not secured, would, no doubt, be ruinous if they were practicable; but, fortunately, they are not practicable, for creditors are very cautious in their transactions, and will make no voluntary loans without a satisfactory pledge. M. Necker, to secure the interest and the sinking fund necessary as a guarantee, balanced each loan with a corresponding reform, and the result was a lowering of expense more than sufficient for the payment of the interest. But this plain method of reducing expenditure to increase disposable revenue does not appear to be ingenious enough to the writers, who aim at being profound when they treat of politics.
It has been alleged that the life annuities granted by M. Necker for the loan of money had a tendency to induce fathers of families to encroach on that property which they ought to leave to their children. Yet it will be found that a life interest, on the plan combined by M. Necker, is as fair and prudent an object of speculation as interest on a perpetuity. The most cautious fathers of families were in the habit of advancing money on the thirty livres at Geneva, in the hope of an eventual increase of capital. There are tontines4 in Ireland, and they have long existed in France. Different modes of speculation must be adopted to attract capitalists of different views. But no one can doubt that a father of a family, if he wants to bring his expenses in order, may accomplish a great increase of capital by placing out a portion of his funds at a very high interest rate and by saving yearly a portion of this interest. I should be almost ashamed to dwell on arrangements so familiar to bankers in Europe. But in France, when the ignorant oracles of the saloons have caught, on a serious subject, a phrase of which the turn is plain to everybody, they are in the habit of repeating it on all occasions, and this rampart of folly it is very difficult to overturn.
Must I also answer those who blame M. Necker for not having changed the mode of taxation and suppressed the gabelles5 by imposing a uniform salt tax on those parts of the kingdom which enjoyed exemption from it? But local privileges were so fondly cherished that nothing short of a revolution could destroy them. The minister who should have ventured to attack them
