t only incurred bitter and incessant animosities, but,
what was harder to bear, he lost the priceless time of which his own
land was only too sorely in need. In the Limousin the luckless creature
had a special disadvantage, for here the collector of the _taille_ had
also to collect the twentieths, and the twentieths were a tax for which
even the privileged classes were liable. They, as might be supposed,
cavilled, disputed, and appealed. The appeal lay to a sort of county
board, which was composed of people of their own kind, and before which
they too easily made out a plausible case against a clumsy collector,
who more often than not knew neither how to read nor to write. Turgot's
reform of a system which was always harassing and often ruinous to an
innocent individual, consisted in the creation of the task of collection
into a distinct and permanent office, exercised over districts
sufficiently large to make the poundage, out of which the collectors
were paid, an inducement to persons of intelligence and spirit to
undertake the office as a profession. However moderate and easy each of
these reforms may seem by itself, yet any one may see how the sum of
them added to the prosperity of the land, increased the efficiency of
the public service, and tended to lessen the grinding sense of injustice
among the common people.

Apart from these, the greatest and most difficult of all Turgot's
administrative reforms, we may notice in passing his assiduity in
watching for the smaller opportunities of making life easier to the
people of his province. His private benevolence was incessant and
marked. One case of its exercise carries our minds at a word into the
very midst of the storm of fire which purified France of the evil and
sordid elements, that now and for his life lay like a mountain of lead
on all Turgot's aims and efforts. A certain foreign contractor at
Limoges was ruined by the famine of 1770. He had a clever son, whom
Turgot charitably sent to school, and afterwards to college in Paris.
The youth grew up to be the most eloquent and dazzling of the Girondins,
the high-souled Vergniaud. It was not, however, in good works of merely
private destination that Turgot mostly exercised himself. In 1767 the
district was infested by wolves. The Intendant imposed a small tax for
the purpose of providing rewards for the destruction of these
tormentors, and in reading the minutes on the subject we are reminded of
the fact, which was