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 204 NECKER NECROMANCY controversy with Calonne, who attacked his financial policy. In 1784 he published his Ad- ministration des finances, which was sold to the number of 80,000 copies in a few days. When his successors, Joly de Fleury, Calonne, and Lomenie de Brienne, had exhausted all available means and brought the exchequer to a crisis, Necker was recalled by Louis XVI., and his return to power, Aug. 25, 1788, was hailed with general applause; confidence at once revived among all classes, and stocks rose 30 per cent, in a single day. But it was not a mere financial reform that was now needed ; a political revulsion was at hand. Necker, rely- ing upon his popularity, flattered himself that he could control the revolutionary movement ; but from the beginning he acted timidly. The assembling of the states general had been prom- ised by his predecessor, and he had to fulfil that promise. In opposition to the notables who insisted upon preserving the ancient mode of holding the states, he procured an order in council allowing the third estate a number of delegates about equal to that of the nobility and clergy combined. On the opening of the states general he made a report upon the condition of France, full of good wishes for the public welfare, but almost devoid of prac- tical suggestions. After the royal session of June 23 he advised Louis XVI. to order the deputies of the nobles and the clergy to join those of the third estate. He was looked upon by the people as the stanchest supporter of their rights; but on July 11, 1789, he was dis- missed by the king and secretly left France. Paris rose at once in the wildest excitement ; his bust, with that of the popular duke of Orleans, was carried in a mourning proces- sion through the streets; an insurrection was organized, and on the 14th the Bastile was taken. The king, yielding to popular clamor, sent immediately for his exiled minister, who was reinstated in office after an absence of 18 days. All the sources of public revenue were exhausted, and he had to provide for daily necessities. A loan for 30,000,000 livres and another for 80,000,000 were proposed by him and voted by the constituent assembly on Aug. 9 and 27 ; and both failed. In this extremity he moved (Sept. 24) that a tax amounting to the fourth part of all incomes should be levied, and the assembly granted it. This was the last financial measure he proposed. He vainly tried to oppose some of the revolutionary measures originating in the constituent assem- bly, such as the seizure of church property and the issuing of assignats. This made him un- popular, not only with the revolutionists, but with the majority of the deputies; while on the other hand he had lost the confidence of the king and of his colleagues. A new issue of assignats to the amount of 800,000,000 having been ordered by the assembly (Sept. 4, 1790), he resigned and started for Switzerland. On the roads where a year previous he had been welcomed as the saviour of France, he was in- sulted, threatened, and even arrested ; an order from the assembly was necessary to procure his release. He retired to his estate of Cop- pet, near Geneva, where he wrote a vindica- tion of his conduct, De V administration de M. Necker, par lui-meme (1791). In 1792 he pub- lished deflexions offertes a la nation francaise en faveur de Louis XVI., which had no other result than to cause him to be placed upon the list of emigres. In 1796 he published an essay, De la revolution francaise, in which he severe- ly censured the directorial government. After the accession of Bonaparte to power, Neck- er dreamed of the possibility of becoming his minister of finance; but in an interview he was coldly if not disdainfully treated. In con- sequence he published (1802) Dernieres vue de politique et de finances, directed against the consular government. Among his miscella- neous writings are : Le bonheur des sots and Fragments sur quelques usages de la societe francaise en 1786, both humorous; Du pou- voir executif dans les grands etats, a political essay (1791) ; and Cours de morale religieuse (1800). His (Euvres completes (17 vols. 8vo) appeared at Paris in 1822. II. Snsanne Cnrchod de Aas.se, wife o the preceding, born in Gene- va in 1739, died at Coppet in May, 1794. She belonged to a French Protestant family, who on the repeal of the edict of Nantes took ref- uge in Switzerland. Her father, a clergyman, gave special attention to her education; and she was early noticed for her solid and ver- satile knowledge no less than her beauty and virtue. The historian Gibbon sought her in marriage, but desisted in consequence of his father's opposition. Having married Necker in 1764, she accompanied him to. Paris, where her house soon became the resort of most of the distinguished writers of the time. Buffon, Saint-Lambert, Marmontel, and Thomas were among her most frequent guests ; and in this society she educated her daughter, the cele- brated Mme. de Stael. She was much occu- pied with acts of benevolence, and was the founder of the hospital which bears her name (1778). In 1794 she published her Reflexions sur le divorce, an elaborate plea for the in- dissolubility of marriage. A selection from her writings (Melanges) was published by her husband after her death in 5 vols. 8vo. NECROMANCY (Gr. veKpoftavrda, from venp6f, dead, and fj.avreia, divination), the art of ob- taining knowledge of future events by consult- ing the spirits of the dead. From the treatise of Tertullian De Anima it appears that the common practice of necromancy in his day consisted in eliciting an oracular response from a dead body. It is generally thought, how- ever, that the term necromancy anciently des- ignated the evocation of departed spirits, and "necyomancy" (Gr. veKvoftavreia, from veuvs, a corpse, and p,avrda) a descent into the abode of the dead. This latter form of divination is a favorite one with epic and dramatic poets of every period ; but no trace of it exists outside