Boncerf's _Inconvenients des Droits Feodaux_, in
which, without criticising the origin of the privileges of the nobles,
the author showed how much it would be to the advantage of the lords to
accept a commutation of their feudal dues. What was still more
exasperating both to nobles and lawyers, was the author's hardy
assertion that if the lords refused the offer of their vassals, the king
had the power to settle the question for them by his own legislative
authority. This was the most important and decisive of the
pre-revolutionary tracts.

Equally violent prejudices and more sensitive interests were touched by
two other sets of proposals. The minister began to talk of a new
territorial contribution, and a great survey and re-assessment of the
land. Then followed an edict restoring in good earnest the free
circulation of corn within the kingdom. Turgot was a partisan of free
trade in its most entire application; but for the moment he contented
himself with the free importation of grain and its free circulation at
home, without sanctioning its exportation abroad. Apart from changes
thus organically affecting the industry of the country, Turgot dealt
sternly with certain corruptions that had crept into the system of
tax-farming, as well as with the monstrous abuses of the system of
court-pensions.

The measures we have enumerated were all excellent in themselves, and
the state of the kingdom was such as urgently to call for them. They
were steps towards the construction of a fabric of freedom and justice.
But they provoked a host of bitter and irreconcilable enemies, while
they raised up no corresponding host of energetic supporters. The reason
of the first of these circumstances is plain enough, but the second
demands a moment's consideration. That the country clergy should
denounce the Philosopher, as they called him, from the pulpit and the
steps of the altar, was natural enough. Many even of his old colleagues
of the Encyclopaedia had joined Necker against the minister. The greatest
of them all, it is true, stood by Turgot with unfailing staunchness; a
shower of odes, diatribes, dialogues, allegories, dissertations, came
from the Patriarch of Ferney to confound and scatter the enemies of the
new reforms. But the people were unmoved. If Turgot published an
explanation of the high price of grain, they perversely took explanation
for gratulation, and thought the Controller preferred to have bread
dear. If he put down s