388 Readings in European History oppose themselves to all reform, and who are such powerful instruments in the hands of interested parties for perpetuat- ing the disorder. I shall have to struggle even against the natural goodness and generosity of your Majesty, and of the persons who are most dear to you. I shall be feared, hated even, by nearly all the court, by all who solicit favors. They will impute to me all the refusals ; they will describe me as a hard man because I shall have advised your Majesty that you ought not to enrich even those that you love at the expense of your people's subsistence. And this people, for whom I shall sacrifice myself, are so easily deceived that perhaps I shall encounter their hatred by the very measures I take to defend them against exactions. I shall be calumniated (having, perhaps, appearances against me) in order to deprive me of your Majesty's confidence. I shall not regret losing a place which I never solicited. I am ready to resign it to your Majesty as soon as I can no longer hope to be useful in it. . . . Your Majesty will remember that it is upon the faith of your promises made to me that I charge myself with a bur- den perhaps beyond my strength, and it is to yourself per- sonally, to the upright man, the just and good man, rather than to the king, that I give myself. I venture to repeat here what you have already been kind enough to hear and approve of. The affecting kindness with which you condescended to press my hands within your own, as if sealing my devotion, will never be effaced from my memory. It will sustain my courage. It has forever united my personal happiness with the interest, the glory, and the happiness of your Majesty. It is with these senti- ments that I am, sire, etc. The preamble to Turgot's edict abolishing the guilds illustrates both the system he endeavored to destroy and his method of educating the people by explaining the nature and defects of the abuses against which the decree was directed.
