We cannot better appreciate the spirit and scope of d'Argenson's proposal than by comparing it with the universally admired design broached, about twenty years later, by the great minister Turgot. The principle of the two policies was practically the same. Turgot proposed, like d'Argenson, to entrust to the people and popular organisations the whole administration of the interior, while retaining the entire legislative authority in the hands of the Crown.[432] The people, as in d'Argenson's scheme, had merely the power of suggesting legislation, though the actual law must proceed from the King. Between the two plans, however, there was one great difference of detail. D'Argenson had surrounded the authority of the Crown with a sacred barrier; behind that barrier the people might exercise all the effective powers of popular control: beyond it they were forbidden to pass. In the proposal of Turgot that barrier was destroyed. Above the circle of Provincial Estates he desired to constitute a Municipality of the Whole Realm; by doing so he would have brought the sphere of popular action into direct juxtaposition with that of the Crown, and have surrounded the very palace gates with the acclamations or with the clamour of the people. Perhaps both policies, at their several periods, had equally little prospect of realisation; but if it were necessary to choose between them with regard to the state of feeling existing and likely to exist in France, the preference might be given to the earlier plan. For a time of disturbance and strain, it can claim one signal excellence, in attempting to provide for the maximum of exasperation with the minimum of indecency and danger. It is the great vice of central, but not sovereign assemblies that they can never come into collision with the Crown without inflicting a grievous blow upon the prestige and authority of the Crown. The veil which shroud it from the vulgar gaze, which surrounds it with an air of sacramental mystery, is torn into a thousand disreputable pieces, and the solemn difference between King and citizen is seen to fade guiltily away. D'Argenson feared, and had always feared, that blighting closeness of contact; and he endeavoured to preserve the influence of the Crown while placing the people in a position from which, in cases of the last emergency, they would be able to control the Crown. It is easy to see how the King at Versailles and a number of Estates in the provincial cities might have quarrelled to the verge of revolution, and yet how the King, by timely concession, might have retained his authority unimpaired.