It was a proud thing for Necker to be received at the gates of Paris by the acclamations of assembled thou sands ; to have his bust paraded through the streets; and his house emblazoned by the inscription, ./Itt Iklinis tre adore ; but this brilliancy was not more lasting than the proverbially unstable nature of popular applause might have led him to expect. With the most earnest desire to act uprightly and honourably, he soon found it impossible to unite an attention to the real interests of the state with the favour of an excited and ignorant moh,—perpetually misled by wicked agitators,—yet drunk with its new-found power, and indulging the most chimelical expectations from the actual posture of af fairs. Necker's mature judgment rendered him hostile to the extravagant and precipitate innovations which were sanctioned by the and tumultuotisly hailed by the populace, who now overruled and intimi dated all parties. With equal ingenuity, keener ardour, and superior eloquence, Mirabeau confronted him like his evil genius ; and, being totally without scruple in the employment of any expedient, honest or the contrary, was but too successful in overturning all reasonable pro posals, and conducting the peopkt to that state of an archy, out of which his own ambition was to be gratified and his own exertions rewarded. When, to meet the immediate necessities of Government, Necker submit ted the project of a loan, and offered to contribute a large sum from his private fortune towards it, Alirabeau insidiously seconded this measure, arid made it a handle for the production of various accounts, before a select committee,—who, being at once devoted to his views, and ignorant of finance, brought out a report cqually in jurious and irritating to Neckc r, and thereby complete ly overset his declining populatity. His previou5 de claration in favoue of the royal veto, though sttictly conformable to those opinions which he had formed, and often expressed loug before, had prepared the misguid ed people for listening to any accusation against him ; and his opposition to the destruction of the noblesse, at tributed to anxiety for his own acquired baronship, ex asperated this distrust into open detestation, He was branded as an aristocrat ; his personal safety was endan gered ; and he felt that it had now become high time to retire. Leaving his share of the loan, (above 80,000/. sterling,) together with a large portion of his pioperty behind him, he accordingly quitted Paris, and returned to Switzerland, travelling by the same road, on which, a few months before, his presence had excited such en thusiastic bursts of joy. The feeling was again as en thusiastic, but its character was altered. Necker se cured himself with difficulty fiom the execrations of those who had so lately blessed him. At Arvis-sur Aube, he was arcsted in his journey,and a decree of the National Assembly became necessary for allowing him to proceed. At Vesoul, notwithstanding of this, his car riage WaS stopped anew : a short time ago, they had un yoked this same carriage, and drawn it in triumph through their streets ; they now loaded with curses the object of their former idolatry, and threatened, or even attempted, to murder his attendants.
Arrived at Copet, far from the turmoils, the hazard, and the splendour of his late situation, Necker had leisure to reflect on the great scenes he had witnessed or shared in, to view the obscurity into yvhich he twas fallen, and to collect the scattered elements which yet remained to him of happiness or contentment. It is rare that a degraded minister enjoys much peace of mind, or can extract pleasure from those sources on which human life must generally depend for its com forts. Whoever has participated largely in the spirit stirring strife of power, who has struggled with its difficulties, and triumphed in subduing them, will find a void in his heart when such excitements are withdrawn, a languor and disquietude, which objects less vast and imposing are altogether incompetent to remove. In .Necker's political history, every thing was grand and surprising; the game Ile had played was deep as well as fluctuating ; and when he lost it, his feelings did not belie the common maxim. "I could have wished," says Gibbon, after a visit at Copet about this period, " to have exhibited him as a \Yarning to any aspiring youth pos sessed with the demon of Ambition. "With all the means
of private happiness in his power, he is the most mise rable of human beings ; the past, the present, and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some domestic amusements, he answered with a deep tone of despair, In the state in which I am, I can feel nothing but the blast that has overthrown me.'" Time, however, which extends its quiet influence to every sensation of sorrow or of joy, did not fail to miti gate this despondency. Necker, indeed, still felt that Ile was banished front the country where his highest hopes had been centred ; but the esteem of impartial men over all Europe, the secret approval of conscience, were not denied him : three-fourths of his fortune might be engulphed in the confusions of France ; but enough still remained for the gratification of his charitable dis positions, and the support of his family in dignity and independence. By degrees his ambition directed itself lo the more peaceful arena of literature and political philosophy, he composed various treatises in support of the doctrines formerly professed by him, and the line of conduct by which he had endeavoured to put them in ef feet. Among his enemies, too, as faction succeeded faction, the misrepresentations which had tarnished his name, began to clear away ; the French government, which had at first proscribed him as an emigrant, eras ed this mark of reprobation, and charged their army, when it entered Switzerland, to treat him with every kind of respect. His pursuits were soothing, and shar ed by those whom he loved; and though his domestic comfort was rudely assailed by the death of NIadame Necker in 1794, there still remained an illustrious daughter, who viewed him with a reverence and affec tion truly filial, and whose brilliant powers it was a de lightful task to unfold. His care, in this particular, was amply recompensed: Madame de Stal, even before her father's death, had gained a literary reputation above that of any female in Europe ; and the writings which subsequently marked her splendid, though too short ca leer, will preserve her name to a distant posterity. Ifer own affectionate and impassioned character, her lonely situation, the unwearied and condescending kindness of her father, made it a pleasure and a duty for Madame de Stael to watch over his declining age with the ten derest solicitude. She seldom quitted him, and had re luctantly obeyed his injunction to recreate and instruct herself by a visit to Germany, when Necker was seized with his last illness. He died, in her absence, on the 9th of April, 1804.
With a fate common to all who have lived in times of political agitation, and thus blended the memory of their actions with that of events, which. give force and ex pression to every fierce quality of human nature, Necker has been painted in the brightest and the blackest of colours, as the varying prejudices of historians have chanced to sway them. By one party he is reproached as the author of the French Revolution, and charged with all its horrors; by another he is eulogized as the virtuous and enlightened statesman, by whose guidance, too little appreciated and lost in factious clamour at the timc, all the advantages of a reform might have been secured without any of its evils. His character, we may safely assert, has been greatly exaggerated in both cases. The French revolution might be accelerated or retard ed, it could not be prevented or produced, by any such circumstance as the conduct of Necker. And if his measures gave form and occasion to thc troubles which followed; who can yet say under what different manage ment the issue would have been milder or more salutary? By the candid of foreign nations, Necker is now consi dered as a minister possessed of talents entitling him to an elevated place among politicians, and of integrity de serving perhaps to set him at their head. His talents, doubtless, were exercised, where their exercise was too powerless to be of any benefit : but the high moral rec titude of his deportment, preceded, followed, surround ed, as it is, by perfidy, and cruelty, and baseness, forms a bright spot, on which the mind gladly reposes amid the general gloom.