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.  The case is one example among others of the importance of the Encyclopaedia as a centre, to which active-minded men of all kinds might bring the fruits of their thought and observation.

Next to the corvees, the monster grievance of the third estate was the system of enrolments for the militia.  The article, Milice, is very short, but it goes to the root of the matter.  The only son of a cultivator of moderate means, forced to quit the paternal roof at the moment when his labour might recompense his straitened parents for the expense of having brought him up, is justly described as an irreparable loss.  The writer, after hinting that it would be well if such an institution were wholly dispensed with, urges that at least its object might be more effectively and more humanely reached by allowing each parish to provide its due contingent of men in its own way.  This change was indeed already (1765) being carried out by Turgot in the Limousin, and with excellent results.  The writer concludes with the highly civilised remark, that we ought to weigh whether the good of the rural districts, the culture of the land, and population, are not preferable objects to the glory of setting enormous hosts of armed men on foot after the example of Xerxes.  Alas, it is one of the discouragements of the student of history, that he often finds highly civilised remarks made one or two or twenty centuries ago, which are just as useful and just as little heeded now as they were when they were made.

The same reflection occurs to one in reading the article on Foundations.  As I have already said, this carefully written and sagacious piece still remains the most masterly discussion we possess of the advantages and disadvantages of endowments.  Even now, and in our own country, the most fertile and beneficent work to which a statesman of energy and courage could devote himself, would be an application of the wise principles which were established in the Encyclopaedia.  Passing from Fondation to Foire in the