To William Carmichael, May 8th, 1789.
The States General were opened day before yesterday. Viewing it as an opera, it was imposing; as a scene of business, the King's speech was exactly what it should have been, and very well delivered; not a word of the Chancellor's was heard by any body, so that, as yet, I have never heard a single guess at what it was about. M. Necker's was as good as such a number of details would permit it to be. The picture of their resources was consoling, and generally plausible. I could have wished him to have dwelt more on those great constitutional reformations, which his "Rapport au Roi" had prepared us to expect. But they observe that these points were proper for the speech of the Chancellor.
To John Jay, May 9th, 1789.
The revolution of this country has advanced thus far without encountering any thing which deserves to be called a difficulty. There have been riots in a few instances, in three or four different places, in which there may have been a dozen or twenty lives lost. The exact truth is not to be got at. A few days ago a much more serious riot took place in this city, in which it became necessary for the troops to engage in regular action with the mob, and probably about one hundred of the latter were killed. Accounts vary from twenty to two hundred. They were the most abandoned banditti of Paris, and never was a riot more unprovoked and unpitied. They began, under a pretense that a paper manufacturer had proposed, in an assembly, to reduce their wages to fifteen sous a day. They rifled his house, destroyed every thing in his magazines and shops, and were only stopped in their career of mischief by the carnage above mentioned. Neither this nor any other of the riots have had a professed connection with the great national reformation going on. They are such as have happened every year since I have been here, and as will continue to be produced by common incidents.
In the same letter, in speaking of the King, he says:
Happy that he is an honest, unambitious man, who desires neither money nor power for himself; and that his most operative minister, though he has appeared to trim a little, is still, in the main, a friend to public liberty.
In a letter to Mr. Jay, June 17, 1789, after alluding to the continued disagreement between the orders composing the States General, as to whether they should vote by persons or orders, he says:
To John Jay, June 17th, 1789.
The Noblesse adhered to their former resolutions, and even the minority, well disposed to the Commons, thought they could do more good in their own chamber, by endeavoring to increase their numbers and fettering the measures of the majority, than by joining the Commons. An intrigue was set on foot between the leaders of the majority in that House, the Queen and Princes. They persuaded the King to go for some time to Marly; he went. On the same day the leaders moved, in the Chamber of Nobles, that they should address the King to declare his own sentiments on the great question between the orders. It was intended that this address should be delivered to him at Marly, where, separated from his ministers, and surrounded by the Queen and Princes, he might be surprised into a declaration for the Nobles. The motion was lost, however, by a very great majority, that Chamber being not yet quite ripe for throwing themselves into the arms of despotism. Necker and Monmorin, who had discovered this intrigue, had warned some of the minority to defeat it, or they could not answer for what would happen.... The Commons (Tiers Etat) having verified their powers, a motion was made, the day before yesterday, to declare themselves constituted, and to proceed to business. I left them at two o'clock yesterday; the debates not then finished....
It is a tremendous cloud, indeed, which hovers over this nation, and he (Necker) at the helm has neither the courage nor the skill necessary to weather it. Eloquence in a high degree, knowledge in matters of account, and order, are distinguishing traits in his character. Ambition is his first passion, virtue his second. He has not discovered that sublime truth, that a bold, unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid even to ambition, and would carry him farther, in the end, than the temporizing, wavering policy he pursues. His judgment is not of the first order, scarcely even of the second; his resolution frail; and, upon the whole, it is rare to meet an instance of a person so much below the reputation he has obtained.
To John Jay, June 24th, 1789.