It is clear that, from an early stage of his attention to the questions raised in the salons and circles by these episodes, Talleyrand was prepared for popular representation, and was disposed to favour the English model. His manifesto, issued on the eve of the States-General, will show us that he did not wait for the logic of events to make him embrace democracy, but there are earlier indications. During the Assembly of the Notables in 1787 he complained to Choiseul that “Paris was taking its cue from the Assembly instead of an instructed Paris impressing its opinion on the Assembly;” and in the same letter he observed with satisfaction that “the people were going to count for something,” and that “the granting of provincial administration [local self-government] and the abolition of privileges would prove a source of great gain.” The tragic incompetency of the King and Queen to master the situation of their country impressed him. Mere “goodness of heart” was fatal. “Too great a familiarity in sovereigns,” he says in his memoirs, “inspires love rather than respect, and at the first mishap affection goes.” It was the opinion of a man in whom (to turn his own words upon himself) “philosophic ideas had replaced sentiments,” but it expresses the facts here. The network of noble and ecclesiastical privileges made aristocracy impossible in an impoverished country. The choice was between a strong autocrat (whom the gods gave when they willed) and a monarchy limited by an educated democracy. With Montesquieu he leaned to the latter; the satirical description of France as “an autocracy tempered with lampoons” is attributed to him. With Turgot he felt that the people must be educated up to self-government. He pleaded strongly for more efficient and more comprehensive education. A contemporary gives this as his fad. He travelled in privileged provinces like Brittany, and noted the good result of local administration. He would hardly admit moral feeling in the matter, but as a practical politician he was for gradual and constitutional, but thorough, reform.