Necker did not belong to the court; he had never lived there, he did
not set foot therein when he became minister. A while ago Colbert and
Louvois had founded families and taken rank among the great lords who
were jealous of their power and their wealth. Under Louis XVI., the
court itself was divided, and one of the queen's particular friends,
Baron do Besenval, said, without mincing the matter, in his Memoires: "I
grant that the depredations of the great lords who are at the head of the
king's household are enormous, revolting. . . . Necker has on his
side the depreciation into which the great lords have fallen; it is such
that they are certainly not to be dreaded, and that their opinion does
not deserve to be taken into consideration in any political speculation."

M. Necker had a regard for public opinion, indeed he attached great
importance to it, but he took its influence to be more extensive and its
authority to rest on a broader bottom than the court or the parliaments
would allow. "The social spirit, the love of regard and of praise," said
he, "have raised up in France a tribunal at which all men who draw its
eyes upon them are obliged to appear: there public opinion, as from the
height of a throne, decrees prizes and crowns, makes and unmakes
reputations. A support is wanted against the vacillations of ministers,
and this important support is only to be expected from progress in the
enlightenment and resisting power of public opinion. Virtues are more
than ever in want of a stage, and it becomes essential that public
opinion should rouse the actors; it must be supported, then, this
opinion, it must be enlightened, it must be summoned to the aid of ideas
which concern the happiness of men."

M. Necker thought the moment had come for giving public opinion the
summons of which he recognized the necessity he felt himself shaken at
court, weakened in the regard of M. de Maurepas, who was still puissant
in spite of his great age, and jealous of him as he had been of M.
Turgot; he had made up his mind, he said, to let the nation know how its
affairs had been managed, and in the early days of the year 1781 he
published his _Compte rendu au roi_.

It was a bold innovation; hitherto the administration of the finances had
been carefully concealed from the eyes of the public as the greatest
secret in the affairs of state; for the first time the nation was called
upon to take cognizance of the position of the pub