Background
Jacques Laffitte was born at Bayonne on the 24th of October 1767, one of the ten children of a carpenter.
Jacques Laffitte was born at Bayonne on the 24th of October 1767, one of the ten children of a carpenter.
Jacques Laffitte became clerk in the banking house of Perregaux in Paris, was made a partner in the business in 1800, and in 1804 succeeded Perregaux as head of the firm. The house of Perregaux, Laffitte et Cie. became one of the greatest in Europe, and Laffitte became regent (1809), then governor (1814) of the Bank of France and president of the Chamber of Commerce (1814).
He raised large sums of money for the provisional government in 1814 and for Louis XVIII during the Hundred Days, and it was with him that Napoleon deposited five million francs in gold before leaving France for the last time.
He was returned by the department of the Seine to the Chamber of Deputies in 1816, and took his seat on the Left.
He spoke chiefly on financial questions; his known Liberal views did not prevent Louis XVIII from insisting on his inclusion on the commission on the public finances.
When Charles X, after retracting the hated ordinances, sent the comte d'Argout1 to Laffitte to negotiate a change of ministry, the banker replied, " It is too late.
There is no longer a Charles X, " and it was he who secured the nomination of Louis Philippe as lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
On the 3rd of August he became president of the Chamber of Deputies, and on the 9th he received in this capacity Louis Philippe's oath to the new constitution.
The government was torn between the necessity for preserving order and the no less pressing necessity (for the moment) of conciliating the Parisian populace; with the result that it succeeded in doing neither one nor the other.
His policy of a French intervention-in favour of the Italian revolutionists, by which he might have regained his popularity, was thwarted by the diplomatic policy of Louis Philippe.
The resignation of Lafayette and Dupont de l'Eure still further undermined the government, which, incapable even of keeping order in the streets of Paris, ended by being discredited with all parties.
At length Louis Philippe, anxious to free himself from the hampering control of the agents of his fortune, thought it safe to parade his want of confidence in the man who had made him king.
Thereupon, in March 1831, Laffitte resigned, begging pardon of God and man for the part he had played in raising Louis Philippe to the throne.
Jacques Laffitte married Marine-Françoise Laeut. They had one dauther.