First the _Corvee_, or feudal rule which forced every unprivileged farmer and peasant in France to furnish so many days' labour for the maintenance of the highways.

Arthur Young tells us, and the statement is confirmed by the Minutes of Turgot, that this wasteful, cruel, and inefficient system was annually the ruin of many hundreds of persons, and he mentions that no less than three hundred farmers were reduced to beggary in filling up a single vale in Lorraine.[163] Under this all-important head, the Encyclopaedia has an article that does not merely add to the knowledge of its readers by a history of the _corvees_, but proceeds to discuss, as in a pamphlet or review article, the inconveniences of the prevailing system, and presses schemes for avoiding them.

Turgot had not yet shown in practice the only right substitute.

The article was printed in 1754, and it was not until ten years later that this great administrator, then become intendant of the Limousin, did away in his district with compulsory personal service on the roads, and required in its place a money payment assessed on the parishes.[164] The writer of the article in the Encyclopaedia does not anticipate this obviously rational plan, but he paints a striking picture of the thousand abuses and miserable inefficiencies of the practice of _corvees_, and his piece illustrates that vigorous discussion of social subjects which the Encyclopaedia stimulated.

It is worth remarking that this writer was a sub-engineer of roads and bridges in the generality of Tours.