It is necessary, therefore, either to take this support away from them, or to prepare for repeated contests which will disturb the tranquillity of your Majesty's reign, and will lead successively either to a degradation of authority or to extreme measures of which one cannot exactly estimate the consequences." In order to apply a remedy to the evils he demonstrated as well as to those which he foresaw, M.Necker had borrowed some shreds from the great system of local assemblies devised by M.Turgot; he had proposed to the king and already organized in Berry the formation of provincial assemblies, recruited in every district (_generalite_) from among the three orders of the noblesse, the clergy, and the third estate.

A part of the members were to be chosen by the king; these were commissioned to elect their colleagues, and the assembly was afterwards to fill up its own vacancies as they occurred.

The provincial administration was thus confided almost entirely to the assemblies.

That of Berry had already abolished forced labor, and collected two hundred thousand livres by voluntary contribution for objects of public utility.

The assembly of Haute-Guyenne was in course of formation.