e drawn lived
in despair, and as no worse thing than the black ticket could possibly
befall them, they had every inducement to run away from their own homes
and villages. At the approach of the commissary of the government, they
fled into the woods and marshes, as if they had been pursued by the
plague. This was a signal for a civil war on a small scale. Those who
were left behind, and whose chance of being drawn was thus increased,
hastened to pursue the fugitives with such weapons as came to their
hands. In the Limousin the country was constantly the scene of murderous
disorders of this kind. What was worse, was not only that the land was
infested by vagabonds and bad characters, but that villages became half
depopulated, and the soil lost its cultivators. Finally, as is uniformly
the case in the history of bad government, an unjust method produced a
worthless machine. The _milice_ supplied as bad troops as the _corvee_
supplied bad roads. The force was recruited from the lowest class of the
population, and as soon as its members had learned a little drill, they
were discharged and their places taken by raw batches provided at random
by blind lot.

Turgot proposed that a character both of permanence and locality should
be given to the provincial force; that each parish or union of parishes
should be required to raise a number of men; that these men should be
left at home and in their own districts, and only called out for
exercise for a certain time each year; and that they should be retained
as a reserve force by a small payment. In this way, he argued that the
government would secure a competent force, and by stimulating local
pride and point of honour would make service popular instead of hateful.
As the government was too weak and distracted to take up so important a
scheme as this, Turgot was obliged to content himself with evading the
existing regulations; and it is a curious illustration of the pliancy of
Versailles, that he should have been allowed to do so openly and without
official remonstrance. He permitted the victim of the ballot to provide
a voluntary substitute, and he permitted the parish to tempt
substitutes by payment of a sum of money on enrolment. This may seem a
very obvious course to follow; but no one who has tried to realise the
strength and obstinacy of routine, will measure the service of a
reformer by the originality of his ideas. In affairs of government, the
priceless qualities are not me