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For even in the case of this very reform, though Turgot was able to make an addition to the taille in commutation of the work on the roads, he was not able to force a contribution, either to the taille or any other impost, from the privileged classes, the very persons who were best able to pay.
Diderot towards the beautiful, Turgot towards the useful, Voltaire towards the true, Rousseau towards the just. But by the side of and above the philosophers, there were the sophists, a venomous vegetation mingled with a healthy growth, hemlock in the virgin forest.
The progress of the human mind means to Turgot the progress of knowledge. Its history is the history of the growth and spread of science and the arts. Its advance is increased enlightenment of the understanding.
Some regard seems to have been paid to peasants' convenience in fixing the season of corvees of road building, but none in those of military transportation. Compensation was given for the latter, but it was inadequate, hardly amounting to one fourth of the market price of such labor. Turgot, iv. 367.
The financial weakness of the French government, destined shortly to pave the way for the Revolution, was clearly visible to Turgot, the Minister of Finances, and he with a few others protested against the expense of a foreign war; but Vergennes carried the day.
From Kings in general the conversation turned upon Louis XV., and M. Turgot remarked that his reign would be always celebrated for the advancement of the sciences, the progress of knowledge, and of philosophy.
A single law, worthy of Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.
Many others echoed the sentiment, and cheered Rayner, who, after he had sent many kind messages to Madame Turgot and Jeannette, hurried down the side and returned on board the frigate. Jack, with the rest of those who had been wounded, had been sent to the hospital. Rayner the next day obtained leave to visit him.
The result may be read with graphic effect in the pages of Arthur Young, both before the Revolution broke out and again after Burke's superb rhetoric had biassed English opinion against it. Turgot, Philosophe et Economiste. Par A. Batbie, p. 380.
Such a design involved a complete re-measurement and re-valuation of all the land of the Generality, and this was a task of immense magnitude and difficulty. It was very imperfectly performed, and Turgot found the province groaning under a mass of fiscal anomalies and disorders. Assessment, collection, exemption, were all alike conducted without definite principles or uniform system.
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