If we read the reports of the Provincial Assemblies which met in some parts of France in 1779, and subsequently throughout the kingdom, and if we study the other public records left by them, we shall be touched by the generous sentiments expressed in them, and astonished at the wonderful imprudence of the language in which they are expressed. The Provincial Assembly of Lower Normandy said, in 1787, ‘We have too frequently seen the money destined by the King for roads serve only to increase the prosperity of the rich without any benefit to the people. It has often been employed to embellish the approach to a country mansion instead of making a more convenient entrance to a town or village.’ In the same assembly the Orders of nobility and clergy, after describing the abuses of compulsory labour, spontaneously offered to contribute out of their own funds 50,000 livres towards the improvement of the roads, in order, as they said, that the roads of the province might be made practicable without any further cost to the people. It would probably have cost these privileged classes less to abolish the compulsory system, and to substitute for it a general tax of which they should pay their quota; but though willing to give up the profit derived from inequality of taxation, they liked to maintain the appearance of the privilege. While they gave up that part of their rights which was profitable, they carefully retained that which was odious. Other assemblies, composed entirely of landowners exempt from the _taille_, and who fully intended to continue so, nevertheless depicted in the darkest colours the hardships which the _taille_ inflicted on the poor. They drew a frightful picture of all its abuses, which they circulated in all directions. But the most singular part of the affair is that to these strong marks of the interest they felt in the common people, they from time to time added public expressions of contempt for them. The people had already become the object of their sympathy without having ceased to be the object of their disdain. The Provincial Assembly of Upper Guienne, speaking of the peasants whose cause they so warmly pleaded, called them _coarse and ignorant creatures, turbulent spirits, and rough and intractable characters_. Turgot, who did so much for the people, seldom spoke of them otherwise.[78]