Jacques, a statesman and financier of France, was born at Geneva on the 30th of September 1732. He was descended from a respectable family, originally from North Germany, and his father was a professor of law in Geneva. At the age of fifteen he quitted Geneva, and proceeding to Paris, entered first into the banking-house of Vernet, and afterwards into that of Thelluson, of which he became the cashier, and at length a partner. On the death of Thelluson, he established a bank on his own account, by which he accumulated a very large fortune. After twenty years of unremitting attention to his profession, he married a Protestant lady of respectable family, and having retired from business, was shortly afterwards named minister of the republic of Geneva at Paris. In accepting of this employment, he refused the emoluments which were attached to it; a degree of forbearance not very usual in public men, but in which he resolutely persisted during the whole course of his political life. In 1769 he published the *Compagnie des Indes*; and the *Essai sur la Legislation et le Commerce des Grains*, as well as the *Eloge de Colbert*, which was crowned by the French Academy, greatly extended the reputation of his political talents.

The disorder in the state of the French finances had become so alarming, that it was found necessary to break through the routine of official promotion, and to choose able men for the public service wherever they could be found. M. Necker, although a foreigner and a Protestant, was accordingly appointed in the year 1776 director of the royal treasury, and in the following year director-general of the finances. The great object of M. Necker was to introduce order and economy in the public management. With this view, he found himself compelled either to suppress useless offices, or to diminish emoluments; and his retrenchments drew upon him the enmity of all those who suffered by his economical reforms. He published in 1781 the well-known piece on the state of the finances entitled *Le Compte Rendu au Roi*, which had not the effect of lessening the number or violent hostility of his enemies. In order the better to struggle with his opponents, he made a demand for a seat in the Council, but was objected to on the ground of his religion. Being persuaded that this scruple would be abandoned, he persisted, and offered his resignation, which was accepted; and in this manner, as is alleged, he became the dupe of his own presumption.

He now retired to Switzerland, where he purchased the barony of Coppet. In 1784 he published an able work entitled *De l'Administration des Finances*, in 3 vols. 8vo, of which 80,000 copies were speedily sold. In 1787 M. Necker sent a memorial to the king, for the purpose of proving the correctness of his calculations in the *Compte Rendu*. His Majesty having read these documents, requested that they might not be published, a proposition in which Necker did not acquiesce, and for this offence he was exiled, by a *lettre de cachet*, 40 leagues from Paris.

Calonne, however, and the Archbishop of Toulouse were found unequal to the task of regulating the French finances, and were successively obliged to resign and make way for Necker, the favourite of the people, who was reinstated in his former post in August 1788.

At this period the French government was assailed by a complication of difficulties, the chief of which was the impracticability of raising the necessary supplies, and the danger of an immediate bankruptcy. A great scarcity also prevailed at Paris, which rendered the populace unusually discontented and tumultuous. Louis XVI. and his advisers pursued a weak and vacillating policy; and, when it was too late, desperately meditated even the most violent measures for the recovery of their authority. Troops were drawn from the most distant parts and encamped around Paris, intended to overawe the deliberations of the Assembly, or perhaps to dissolve it at once at the point of the bayonet. These violent courses M. Necker opposed, and he accordingly, at his own suggestion, was dismissed on the 11th July 1789, and requested to quit the kingdom in twenty-four hours. It is impossible to describe the consternation and wild confusion which prevailed in the capital when the dismissal and exile of this favourite minister was made known. His recall was demanded by the enraged populace, and a letter was written to Necker at Basle, requesting him to return. This popularity, however, was not of long duration. Being alarmed by the excesses which had already taken place, Necker became desirous to support the authority of the sovereign; and, without conciliating the confidence of the king's friends, he lost that of the popular party. His personal safety being now in danger from the violence of the people, he quitted Paris in the most private manner in the month of December 1790.

After the loss of his power and popularity, Necker seems to have sunk into the greatest dejection. "I could have wished," says Gibbon, who passed some days with him about this period, "to have exhibited him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable 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 which has overthrown me.'" He had recourse to writing to divert his melancholy; and several works which he published were the fruits of his labours during this period. He died at Coppet on the 9th of April 1804, after a short but painful illness.

His writings, besides those already mentioned, are—*Memoire sur les Administrations Provinciales*, 1781; *De l'Importance des Opinions Religieuses*, 1788; *Sur l'Administration de Necker, par lui-même*, 1791; *Du Pouvoir Exécutive dans les Grands Etats*, 1792; *De la Revolution Francaise*, 1797. (See his *Memoires* by his illustrious daughter, Madame de Staël. A complete edition of Necker's *Œuvres* was published in 15 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1821.)