ning the misfortunes of the realm.

Turgot was one of the men to whom good government is a religion. It
might be said to be the religion of all the best men of that century,
and it was natural that it should be so. The decay of a theology that
places our deepest solicitudes in a sphere beyond this, is naturally
accompanied by a transfer of these high solicitudes to a nearer scene.
But though the desire for good government, and a right sense of its
cardinal importance, were common ideas of the time in all the best heads
from Voltaire downwards, yet Turgot had a patience which in them was
universally wanting. There are two sorts of mistaken people in the
world: those who always think that something could and ought to have
been done to prevent disaster, and those who always think that nothing
could have been done. Turgot was very far removed indeed from the latter
class, but, on the other side, he was too sagacious not to know that
there are some evils of which we do well to bear a part, as the best
means of mitigating the other part. Though he respected the writings of
Rousseau and confessed his obligations to them, Turgot abhorred
declamation. He had no hope of clearing society of the intellectual and
moral debris of ages at a stroke. Nor had he abstract standards of human
bliss. The keyword to his political theory was not Pity nor Benevolence,
but Justice. 'We are sure to go wrong,' he said once, when pressed to
confer some advantage on the poor at the cost of the rich, 'the moment
we forget that _justice alone can keep the balance true among all rights
and all interests_.' Let us proceed to watch this principle actively
applied in a field where it was grievously needed.

As everybody knows, the great fiscal grievance of old France was the
_taille_, a tax raised on property and income, but only on the property
and income of the unprivileged classes. In the Limousin Turgot's
predecessor tried to substitute for the arbitrary _taille_, a tax
systematically assessed in proportion to the amount of the person's
property. 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. Besides these abuses, the