Closely connected with the attack upon the Church was the embarrassing question of finance. No man, on the outbreak of the Revolution, enjoyed so high a reputation for finance as Necker, and no man probably misused that reputation more. Everyone knew that the financial embarrassments of the country were the real cause of the summoning of the States-General. Everyone knew that there was, first, an enormous annual deficit amounting to at least 120 or 130 million francs, and rising for the year 1789 to a much higher figure, and, secondly, a very heavy floating debt. The natural course, and the only wise one, would have been for the Minister to have laid bare at once all the embarrassments of the State, and to have used his great popularity and credit for facing the difficulty boldly, and for setting matters on a satisfactory footing for the future. Instead of that, Necker, either for mistaken political reasons, or for more personal and less worthy causes, from the first minimised the financial difficulty, represented the deficit as much less than it was, described the work of restoring order in the finances as 'mere child's play,' and concealed the worst features of the situation from the public to whom he appealed for support. Necker's system of finance had been to proceed by raising loans on favourable terms--a system for which his financial reputation and connections gave him peculiar facilities. During the summer of 1789, he continued to carry on this system, and the State lived, for a time, upon the money which Necker raised by loan or borrowed from the Caisse d'Escompte, and upon the patriotic contributions which enthusiastic ladies and gentlemen poured into the Exchequer. But by the autumn, it had become clear, even to Necker, that this system would not do for ever, that the credit of the State was not improving, that loans could no longer be raised with success, and that the condition of the finances generally was far worse than it had been five months before. Thereupon, at the end of September, Necker came forward with a heroic remedy, and thanks to the support of Mirabeau, he induced the Assembly to consent to an extraordinary tax of one quarter of all incomes in the country, to be paid within the next three years.