The success of the Revolution in America had done much to remove the ban of silence. Loans made by France had added to the scarcity of money; and it was these loans which had brought America success. The people across the ocean had wiped the slate clean and begun afresh. Why not follow their example? In the winter of 1782, when Paris was suffering from the Russian influenza, a lady with a clever tongue and the eye of a prophet had said, "We are threatened with another malady which will come from America—the Independenza!" Thoughtful people were beginning to believe that a change was only a matter of time; but that it would come slowly and stretch over many years.
Meanwhile the months passed and the glittering outer shell of the old order of things continued to glitter. Lafayette divided his time between Paris, the court, and Chavaniac. He made at least one journey in the brilliant retinue of the king. He dined and gave dinners. He did everything in his power to increase commerce with the United States. He took part in every public movement for reform, and instituted small private ones of his own. One of these was to ask the king to revoke a pension of seven hundred and eighty livres that had been granted him when he was a mere baby, and to divide it between a retired old infantry officer and a worthy widow of Auvergne. Incidentally people seemed to like him in spite of his republicanism. It was no secret to any one that he had come home from America a thorough believer in popular government.
His fame was by no means confined to France and the lands lying to the west of it. Catherine II of Russia became curious to see this much-talked-of person and invited him to St. Petersburg. Learning that she was soon to start for the Crimea, he asked leave to pay his respects to her there; but that was a journey he never made. Before he could set out Louis XVI called a meeting of the Assembly of Notables, to take place on February 22, 1787. This was in no true sense a parliament; only a body of one hundred and forty-four men who held no offices at court, selected arbitrarily by the king to discuss such subjects as he chose to set before it. The subject was to be taxation, how to raise money for government expenses, a burning question with every one.
Deliberative assemblies were no new thing in France. Several times in long-past history a king had called together representative men of the nobles, the clergy, and even of the common people, to consider questions of state and help bring about needed reforms. Such gatherings were known as States General. But they had belonged to a time before the kings were quite sure of their power, and it was one hundred and seventy years since the last one had been called. Little by little, in the mean time, even the provincial parliaments, of which there were several in different parts of France, had been sapped of strength and vitality. There was a tendency now to revive them. Lafayette had stopped in Rennes on his way home from Brest after his last trip across the Atlantic, to attend such a gathering in Brittany, where he owned estates, his mother having been a Breton. Favoring representative government as he did, he was anxious to see such assemblages meet frequently at regular intervals.
The call for the Assembly of Notables had come about in an unexpected way. Some years before, the Minister of Finance, Necker, had printed a sort of treasurer's report showing how public funds had been spent. This was a great novelty, such questions having been shrouded in deepest mystery. Everybody who could read read Necker's report. It was seen on the dressing-tables of ladies and sticking out of the pockets of priests. Necker had meant it to pave the way for reforms, because he believed in cutting down expenses instead of imposing more taxes. It roused such a storm of discussion and criticism that he was driven from the Cabinet; after which his successor, M. Calonne, "a veritable Cagliostro of finance," managed to juggle for four years with facts and figures before the inevitable day of reckoning came. This left the country much worse off than it had been when he took office; so badly off, in fact, that the king called together the Assembly of Notables.
By an odd coincidence it held its first meeting at Versailles on a date forever linked in American minds with ideas of popular liberty—the 22d of February. For practical work, it was divided into seven sections or committees, each one of which was presided over by a royal prince. If the intention had been to check liberal tendencies among its members, the effort was vain. The spirit of independence was in it, and it refused to solve the king's financial riddles for him.
From the beginning Lafayette took an active and much more radical part than some of his friends wished. He worked in behalf of the French Protestants. He wanted to reform criminal law; to give France a jury system such as England had; and he advocated putting a stop to the abuses of lettres de cachet. He was very plain-spoken in favor of cutting down expenses, particularly in the king's own military establishment, in pensions granted to members of the royal family, and in the matter of keeping up the palaces and pleasure-places that former monarchs had loved, but which Louis XVI never visited. He believed in taxing lands and property belonging to the clergy, which had not as yet been taxed at all. He wanted the nobility to pay their full share, too, and he thought a treasurer's report should be published every year. Indeed, he wanted reports printed about all departments of government except that of Foreign Affairs.
This was worse than amiable weakness, it was rank republicanism; the more dangerous because, as one of the ministers said, "all his logic is in action." The queen, who had never more than half liked him, began to distrust him. Calonne, who was about to leave the treasury in such a muddle, declared that he ought to be shut up in the Bastille; and a remark that Lafayette was overheard to make one day when the education of the dauphin was under discussion did not add to his popularity with the court party. "I think," he said, "that the prince will do well to begin his study of French history with the year 1787."
One day he had the hardihood to raise his voice and say, "I appeal to the king to convene a national assembly." There was a hush of astonishment and of something very like fear. "What!" cried a younger brother of the king, the Comte d'Artois, who presided over the section of which Lafayette was a member. "You demand the convocation of the States General?" "Yes, Sire." "You wish to go on record? To have me say to the king that M. de Lafayette has made a motion to convene the States General?" "Yes, Monseigneur—and better than that!" by which Lafayette meant he hoped such an assembly might be made more truly representative than ever before.
That Lafayette realized the personal consequences of his plain speaking there is no doubt. He wrote to Washington, "The king and his family, as well as the notables who surround him, with the exception of a few friends, do not pardon the liberties I have taken or the success I have gained with other classes of society." If he cherished any illusions, they were dispelled a few months later when he received a request from the king to give up his commission as major-general.