"The king," said the preamble, "wishes to secure to all his subjects, and especially to the humblest, to those who have no property but their labor and their industry, the full and entire enjoyment of their rights, and to reform, consequently, the institutions which strike at those rights, and which, in spite of their antiquity, have failed to be legalized by time, opinion, and even the acts of authority." The second substituted for forced labor on roads and highways an impost to which all proprietors were equally liable.
This was the first step towards equal redistribution of taxes; great was the explosion of disquietude and wrath on the part of the privileged; it showed itself first in the council, by the mouth of M.de Miromesnil; Turgot sprang up with animation.

"The keeper of the seals," he said, "seems to adopt the principle that, by the constitution of the state, the noblesse ought to be exempt from all taxation.

This idea will appear a paradox to the majority of the nation.

The commoners (_roturiers_) are certainly the greatest number, and we are no longer in the days when their voices did not count." The king listened to the discussion in silence.

"Come," he exclaimed abruptly, "I see that there are only M.
Turgot and I here who love the people," and he signed the edicts.
The Parliament, like the noblesse, had taken up the cudgels; they made representation after representation.