the town merchants and the
country gentlemen, who contributed not an hour nor a sou to the work. It
was exactly the most indigent upon whose backs this slavish load was
placed. There were a hundred abuses of spite or partiality, of
favouritism or vengeance, in the allotment of the work. The wretch was
sent to the part of the road most distant from his own house; or he was
forced to work for a longer time than fell fairly to his share; or he
saw a neighbour allowed to escape on payment of a sum of money. And at
the end of all the roads were vile. The labourers, having little heart
in work for which they had no wage, and weakened by want of food, did
badly what they had to do. There was no scientific superintendence, no
skilled direction, no system in the construction, no watchfulness as to
the maintenance. The rains of winter and the storms of summer did damage
that one man could have repaired by careful industry from day to day,
and that for lack of this one man went on increasing, until the road
fell into holes, the ditches got filled up, and deep pools of water
stood permanently in the middle of the highway. The rich disdained to
put a hand to the work; the poor, aware that they would be forced to the
hated task in the following autumn or spring, naturally attended to
their own fields, and left the roads to fall to ruin.

It need not be said that this barbarous slovenliness and disorder meant
an incredible waste of resources. It was calculated that a contractor
would have provided and maintained fine roads for little more than
one-third of the cost at which the _corvee_ furnished roads that were
execrable. Condorcet was right in comparing the government in this
matter to a senseless fellow, who indulges in all the more lavish riot,
because by paying for nothing, and getting everything at a higher price
on credit, he is never frightened into sense by being confronted with a
budget of his prodigalities.

It takes fewer words to describe Turgot's way of dealing with this
oriental mixture of extravagance, injustice, and squalor. The Intendant
of Caen had already proposed to the inhabitants of that district the
alternative plan of commuting the _corvee_ into a money payment. Turgot
adopted and perfected this great transformation. He substituted for
personal service on the roads a yearly rate, proportional in amount to
the _taille_. He instituted a systematic survey and direction of the
roads, existing or required in the