He dreaded, moreover, the corporate spirit, which he considered narrow and intolerant.

"When you say, We," he would often repeat, "do not be surprised that the public should answer, You." Intimately connected with the most esteemed magistrates and economists, such as MM.

Trudaine, Quesnay, and Gournay, at the same time that he was writing in the _Encyclopaedia,_ and constantly occupied in useful work, Turgot was not yet five and thirty when he was appointed superintendent of the district of Limoges.

There, the rare faculties of his mind and his sincere love of good found their natural field; the country was poor, crushed under imposts, badly intersected by roads badly kept, inhabited by an ignorant populace, violently hostile to the recruitment of the militia.

He encouraged agriculture, distributed the talliages more equitably, amended the old roads and constructed new ones, abolished forced labor (_corvees_), provided for the wants of the poor and wretched during the dearth of 1770 and 1771, and declined, successively, the superintendentship of Rouen, of Lyons, and of Bordeaux, in order that he might be able to complete the useful tasks he had begun at Limoges.