aised up against him.

His first battle was on an issue which is painfully familiar to our own
Indian administrators at the present time. In 1764, an edict had been
promulgated decreeing free trade in grain, not with foreign countries,
but among the different provinces of the kingdom. This edict had not
made much way in the minds either of the local officials or of the
people at large, and the presence of famine made the free and
unregulated export of food seem no better than a cruel and outrageous
paradox. The parlement of Bordeaux at once suspended the edict of 1764.
They ordered that all dealers in grain, farmers of land, owners of land,
of whatever rank, quality, or condition, should forthwith convey to the
markets of their district '_a sufficient quantity_' of grain to
provision the said markets. The same persons were forbidden to sell
either by wholesale or retail any portion of the said grain at their own
granaries. Turgot at once procured from the Council at Versailles the
proper instrument for checking this impolitic interference with the free
circulation of grain, and he contrived this instrument in such
conciliatory terms as to avoid any breach with the parlement, whose
motives, for that matter, were respectable enough. In spite, however,
of the action of the government, popular feeling ran high against free
markets. Tumultuous gatherings of famishing men and women menaced the
unfortunate grain-dealers. Waggoners engaged in carrying grain away from
a place where it was cheaper, to another place where it was dearer, were
violently arrested in their business, and terrified from proceeding.
Hunger prevented people from discerning the unanswerable force of the
argument that if the grain commanded a higher price somewhere else, that
was a sure sign of the need there being more dire. The local officials
were as hostile as their humbler neighbours. At the town of Turenne,
they forbade grain to be taken away, and forced the owners of it to sell
it on the spot at the market rate. At the town of Angouleme the
lieutenant of police took upon himself to order that all the grain
destined for the Limousin should be unloaded and stored at Angouleme.
Turgot brought a heavy hand to bear on these breakers of administrative
discipline, and readily procured such sanction as his authority needed
from the Council.

One of the most interesting of the measures to which Turgot resorted in
meeting the destitution of the country, was t