banker, diplomat, and finance minister to Louis XVI.

BORN in Geneva, Necker was sent to Paris to work in a bank until starting his own – Thellusson et Necker – which would become famous, and Necker would amass wealth through grain speculation and loans to the treasury. In 1764, Necker married Suzanne Curchod de Nasse. Their daughter, Anne Louise Germaine, would become the noted author, Madame de Staël.

Necker entered public life as a director of the French East India Company, resigning his share in the bank to take up office at his wife’s urging. In 1776 he was appointed Director-General of Finance, instigating a number of popular reforms. At loggerheads with Louis XVI over the need for tax reform to cover the nation’s ballooning debt, Necker was dismissed after publishing the first account of the royal finances, Compte rendu au roi (1781).

In 1788, the dire state of public finances led to his re-appointment. Ratifying the Dauphiné assembly, Necker hastened the summoning of the Estates General and doubled the size of the Third Estate. His subsequent dismissal sparked public outrage, and helped precipitate the storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789). Bowing to public pressure, and at Jean Joseph Mounier’s insistence, Louis XVI recalled Necker, who was paraded through Paris in triumph. Ill-suited to his role as statesman, however, Necker would not co-operate with Lafayette and Mirabeau and mismanaged crucial economic measures. In 1790 he resigned in disgrace, living in retirement near Geneva until his death in 1804.

If the Edinburgh took issue in its second number with the republican vision for France Necker outlined in Last Views [Dernières Vues de Politique et de Finance (1802)], his ‘pacific and impartial disposition’ was welcomed (ER 1:395).

William Christie, University of Sydney