all prejudices; and when he endeavoured to mitigate the evils occasioned by the late scarcity, by introducing a free traffic in grain, both the magistrates and the peasantry did all in their power to counteract his wise and benevolent exertions. In spite of his new regulations, supported by a clear explanation of the grounds upon which they rested, the land-owners and corn-merchants could not transport their grain to those places where the price was highest, the want therefore most urgent, and the supply most beneficial, without exposing their persons to insults, and their property to the pillage of the people, as well as to the local taxes imposed by the magistrates. Turgot lost no time in addressing a circular to the proper officers, in which he urged them, by the pleas both of reason and authority, to put in force the laws, and check the popular irritation. He showed that the difference of weather often produces an abundant harvest in some districts, and a deficient one in others; and that the only effectual way of relieving the necessary distress in the latter, is to permit the free transport of the surplus produce of the former: that if one town were to arrogate the right of prohibiting the transit or export of grain, other towns would justly pretend to the same privilege; and that what might be felt as a benefit to the inhabitants of one spot in a year of external scarcity, would be deprecated by the same persons as a curse in a year of internal famine. The clearness and conciliatory tone with which the principle of the freedom of trade was laid down, produced the desired effect; and the writer had the satisfaction of seeing the wants of the people supplied, without recurring to the demoralizing expedient of indiscriminate charity. Soon after the success of this experiment, the Minister of Finance consulted the Intendants of the kingdom upon the laws relating to the commerce of grain. Turgot wrote seven letters in answer, in which he developed at length his views on the subject of free trade; and not long after he composed an essay on the Formation of Wealth, which, as his celebrated biographer Condorcet observes, may be considered as the germ of Smith’s Wealth of Nations.