60 Charles KuhliiKinii 



tlic "authority" of the king is not clear, but it is certain 

 tliat they did not mean his absolute authority. When, 

 through the medium of Moleville, they asked to be di- 

 rected b}^ Necker, they did not intend to surrender to the 

 minister those rights which were now generally recognized 

 as belonging to the nation, and which in their minds in- 

 cluded the power of determining the form of the States 

 General.^ But because they had in this general way 

 evinced a desire to be guided by Necker, this minister has 

 been blamed for not entering into intelligence with them 

 in order to keep them in the channels of moderation in 

 which it is supposed they Avere at first inclined to move.^ 

 If, however, we ask in what this moderation consisted, we 

 learn that it was merely good will toward, and a certain 

 degree of faith in Louis XYl. and his popular minister. 

 While the question of the organization of the States Gen- 

 eral was under discussion, what proposition could Necker 

 have made to a group of men who had from the first dis- 

 tinguished themselves by their intolerance and the un- 

 compromising attitude they assumed toward the privi- 

 leged orders, advocating action on May 14 as radical as 

 that concluded in the revolutionary resolution of June 17? 

 These favorable sentiments regarding the king and 

 Necker gave them but little assurance over the steps the 

 government might take relative to the action of the Third 



Royal Session which had created such uneasiness, and after the insult 

 to the dignity of the deputies of the Third Estate in the unceremon- 

 ious closing of their hall on the 20th: "Qu'il (the king) n'a pour 

 but dans le seance royale que d'en faire modifier quelques expressions 

 <iue nos adversaires auront presentees sous un mauvais jour"! 



^See pp. 47, 48. 



= Zinkeiseti (I, 66) says: "Nichts ware also damals vielleicht leich- 

 ter gewesen, als den Club Breton zu einem bequemen Werkzeuge des 

 Hofes und der Regierung zu machen, wenn dieses Werkzeug nur in 

 die Hande eines geschickteren Ministers gefallen ware, als Necker 

 war." See also Cherest, La chute cle Vancien regime, III, 120, and 

 the extract from Moleville, in Aulard, I, p. XV. 



26G 



