M. Turgot was appointed to the post of utmost difficulty and danger--the administration of the finances. He had acquired much reputation by the skill with which, for twelve years, he had administered the government of the Province of Limousin. The kingdom of France was already in debt more than four thousand millions of francs ($800,000,000).[43] As the revenue was by no means sufficient to pay the interest upon this debt and the expenses of the government, new loans had been incessantly resorted to, and national bankruptcy was near at hand. To continue borrowing was ruin; to impose higher taxes upon the people impossible. There were but two measures which could be adopted. One was to introduce a reform of wide-sweeping and rigid economy, cutting down salaries, abolishing pensions and sinecures, and introducing frugality into the pleasure-haunts of the court. Turgot was too well acquainted with the habits of the courtiers to dream that it was in the power of any minister to enforce this reform. There remained only the plan to induce the clergy and the nobles to allow themselves to be taxed, and thus to bear their fair proportion of the expenses of the state. Turgot fully understood the Herculean task before him in attempting this measure, and in a letter to the king he wrote: "We will have no bankruptcies, no augmentation of the taxes, no loans. I shall have to combat abuses of every kind, to combat those who are benefited by them, and even the kindness, sire, of your own nature. I shall be feared, hated, and calumniated; but the affecting goodness with which you pressed my hands in yours, to witness your acceptance of my devotion to your service, is never to be obliterated from my recollection, and must support me under every trial."[44] Several of Turgot's measures of reform the privileged class submitted to, though with reluctance and with many murmurs; but when he proposed that a tax should be fairly and equally levied upon proprietors of every description, a burst of indignant remonstrance arose from the nobles which drowned his voice. To suggest that a _high-born_ man was to be taxed like one _low-born_ was an insult too grievous to be borne. The whole privileged class at once combined, determined to crush the audacious minister thus introducing the doctrine of equal taxation into the court of aristocratic privilege.