llor in the Parliament, on the 30th of December, 1752. Master of
requests in 1753, he consented to sit in the King's Chamber, when the
Parliament suspended the administration of justice. "The Court," he
said, "is exceeding its powers." A sense of equity thus enlisted him in
the service of absolute government. He dreaded, moreover, the corporate
spirit, which he considered narrow and intolerant. "When you say, We,"
he would often repeat, "do not be surprised that the public should
answer, You."

Intimately connected with the most esteemed magistrates and economists,
such as MM. Trudaine, Quesnay, and Gournay, at the same time that he was
writing in the _Encyclopaedia,_ and constantly occupied in useful work,
Turgot was not yet five and thirty when he was appointed superintendent
of the district of Limoges. There, the rare faculties of his mind and
his sincere love of good found their natural field; the country was poor,
crushed under imposts, badly intersected by roads badly kept, inhabited
by an ignorant populace, violently hostile to the recruitment of the
militia. He encouraged agriculture, distributed the talliages more
equitably, amended the old roads and constructed new ones, abolished
forced labor (_corvees_), provided for the wants of the poor and wretched
during the dearth of 1770 and 1771, and declined, successively, the
superintendentship of Rouen, of Lyons, and of Bordeaux, in order that he
might be able to complete the useful tasks he had begun at Limoges. It
was in that district, which had become dear to him, that he was sought
out by the kindly remembrance of Abbe de Wry, his boyhood's friend, who
was intimate with Madame de Maurepas. Scarcely had he been installed in
the department of marine and begun to conceive vast plans, when the late
ministers of Louis XV. succumbed at last beneath the popular hatred; in
the place of Abbe Terray, M. Turgot became comptroller-general.

The old parliamentarians were triumphant; at the same time as Abbe
Terray, Chancellor Maupeou was disgraced, and the judicial system he had
founded fell with him. Unpopular from the first, the Maupeou Parliament
had remained in the nation's eyes the image of absolute power corrupted
and corrupting. The suit between Beaumarchais and Councillor Goezman had
contributed to decry it, thanks to the uproar the able pamphleteer had
managed to cause; the families of the former magistrates were powerful,
numerous, esteemed, and they pu