he Catholic clergy, first, as to the duties of promiscuous
almsgiving, and second, as to the virtue of improvident marriages. In
1614 the States General had been for hanging all mendicants, and Colbert
had sent them to the galleys. Turgot was less rigorous than that, but he
would not suffer his efforts for the economic restoration of his
province to be thwarted by the influx of these devouring parasites, and
he sent every beggar on whom hands could be laid to prison.

The story of the famine in the Limousin brings to light some instructive
facts as to the temper of the lords and rich proprietors on the eve of
the changes that were to destroy them. Turgot had been specially anxious
that as much as possible of what was necessary for the relief of
distress should be done by private persons. He knew the straits of the
government. He knew how hard it would be to extract from it the means of
repairing a deficit in his own finances. Accordingly he invited the
landowners, not merely to contribute sums of money in return for the
public works carried on in their neighbourhood, but also, by way of
providing employment to their indigent neighbours, to undertake such
works as they should find convenient on their own estates. The response
was disappointing. 'The districts,' he wrote in 1772, 'where I have
works on foot, do not give me reason to hope for much help on the side
of the generosity of the nobles and the rich landowners. The Prince de
Soubise is so far the only person who has given anything for the works
that have been executed in his duchy.' Nor was abstinence from
generosity the worst part of this failure in public spirit. The same
nobles and landowners who refused to give, did not refuse to take away.
Most of them proceeded at once to dismiss their _metayers_, the people
who farmed their lands in consideration of a fixed proportion of the
produce. Turgot, in an ordinance of admirable gravity, remonstrated
against this harsh and impolitic proceeding. He pointed out that the
unfortunate wretches, thus stripped of every resource, would have to
leave the district, abandoning their wives and children to the charity
of villages that were already overburdened with the charge of their own
people. To cast this additional load on the villages was all the more
unjust, because the owners of land had been exempted from one-half of
the taxes levied on the owners of other property, exactly because the
former were expected to provide for