same volume, also from the pen of Turgot, we see an almost equally striking example of the economic wisdom of the encyclopaedic school.  The provincial fairs, with their privileges, exemptions, exclusions, were a conspicuous case of the mischief done by that “mania for regulating and guiding everything,” which then infected commercial administration, and interrupted the natural course of trade by imbecile vexations of police.  Another vicious example of the same principle is exposed in the article on Maitrises.  This must have convinced every reader capable of rising above “the holy laws of prejudice,” how bad faith, idleness, disorder, and all the other evils of monopoly were fomented by a system of jealous trade-guilds, carrying compulsory subdivision and restriction of all kinds of skilled labour down to a degree that would have been laughable enough, if it had only been less destructive.

One of the loudest cries in 1789 was for the destruction of game and the great manorial chases or capitaineries.  “By game,” says Arthur Young, “must be understood whole droves of wild boars, and herds of deer not confined by any wall or pale, but wandering at pleasure over the whole country to the destruction of crops, and to the peopling of the galleys by the wretched peasants who presumed to kill them, in order to save that food which was to support their helpless children."[165] In the same place he enumerates the outrageous and incredible rules which ruined agriculture over hundreds of leagues of country, in order that the seigneurs might have sport.  In most matters the seven volumes of the Encyclopaedia which were printed before 1757, are more reserved than the ten volumes which were conducted by Diderot alone after the great schism of 1759.  On the subject of sport, however, the writer of the article Chasse enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister could desire to see impressed on public opinion.  Some of the paragraphs startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a very cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that was stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a generation later (1787).  “Go to the residence of these great nobles,” he says, “wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boar, and wolves.  Oh! if I were the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip!"[166]

This brings us to what is perhaps the most striking of all the guiding sentiments of the book.  Virgil’s Georgics have been described as a glorification of labour.  The Encyclopaedia seems inspired by the same motive, the same earnest enthusiasm for all the purposes, interests, and details of productive industry.  Diderot, as has been justly said, himself the son of a cutler, might well bring handiwork into honour; assuredly he had inherited from his good father’s workshop sympathy and regard for skill and labour.[167]