What Is the Third Estate?
Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État ?
The pamphlet that made the Abbé Sieyès famous on the eve of the French Revolution, published in January 1789 as the Estates-General were being summoned. What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask? To be something. Sieyès argues that the commoners who do the nation’s work are the nation, that the privileged orders stand outside it, and that only the nation, through extraordinary representatives, can make a constitution; he urges the Third to sit apart as a National Assembly, which it did that June.
- Edition
- Translated for the Compendium from the French of the third edition ([Paris], 1789), the standard text, as scanned by Google from a copy now on archive.org; one page missing from that scan is supplied from Edme Champion’s edition (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de la Révolution française, 1888). With Sieyès’s own footnotes.
- Source
- archive.org (third edition, 1789)
Start reading 2 h 56 min audiobook
Quiz
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Contents
- What Is the Third Estate? 2 min 10
Sieyès states the plan of the pamphlet in three questions and answers: the Third Estate is everything, has been nothing in the political order, and asks to become something. Three further chapters examine what has been offered, what ought to have been done, and what remains to be done.
- 1 The Third Estate Is a Complete Nation 9 min 12
A nation needs private work and public functions. Sieyès sorts private work into four classes, from agriculture to personal services, and shows that the Third Estate performs it all, as well as nineteen-twentieths of public functions, the privileged keeping only the lucrative and honorific posts. Monopoly of office makes service dearer and worse. The nobility, idle and living under its own laws and representation, is no part of the nation but a people apart, a burden on it. A nation is a body of associates under a common law and a common representation. The Third Estate is therefore everything.
- 2 What Has the Third Estate Been Until Now? Nothing 12 min 11
Sieyès rejects the nobles’ claim to rule by right of Frankish conquest and defines the Third Estate as all who live under the common law without privilege. Its supposed representatives in past Estates-General were ennobled men or holders of temporary privileges, often not freely elected, and so never held the people’s mandate. Every privilege sets its holder against the common interest; exemptions should be extended to all, not abolished. Church, Sword and Robe form a real aristocracy that controls the legislature and the executive; France has been ruled by a court, not a monarch. The Third’s political rights are nil.
- 3 What Does the Third Estate Ask? To Become Something 32 min 22
The towns’ petitions ask for three things: deputies drawn only from the Third, as many as the other two orders together, and voting by head. Sieyès finds even these inadequate, since privilege will work through dependents and property, and answers the objections: free choice of deputies serves lords who control rural electors; the Third has enough enlightened men; representation should follow population and contribution. He counts about 81,400 clergy and 110,000 nobles against 25 or 26 million people. The Third’s wealth has grown while feudalism has become a shadow. Properly, the orders cannot vote together at all.
- 4 What the Government Has Attempted, and What the Privileged Propose, in Favour of the Third Estate 41 min 24
Sieyès reviews what has been offered. Calonne’s provincial assemblies, organised by property rather than order, were spoiled by Brienne; the Notables defended their privileges. Noble and clerical writers have championed the Third. The privileged now offer to pay taxes equally, but this leaves intact their legal, judicial and political privileges, which he catalogues at length. A compromise of voting by head only on taxes would be a trap. An English-style upper chamber would mix orders into the Commons and entrench privilege; the English constitution itself owes more to the jury and to chance than to principle, and France should set its own example.
- 5 What Ought to Have Been Done: Principles on This Subject 31 min 11
Only the nation can settle constitutional disputes. Sieyès describes three periods in forming a political society: individual wills associating, a common will acting, and government by proxy. A constitution organises and limits the delegated powers; it is the work of the constituent power, never of constituted bodies, and the nation itself, which never leaves the state of nature, is bound by no form. Ordinary representatives govern within the constitution; extraordinary representatives, elected without regard to orders, should have been convoked to settle it. The common will is the will of the majority, so a privileged minority cannot hold two-thirds of it.
- 6 What Remains to Be Done: Development of Some Principles 50 min 17
Conciliation is over; the privileged have chosen privilege over liberty. Sieyès offers the Third two courses: to meet alone as a National Assembly, since it represents twenty-five million against two hundred thousand and the orders cannot form one will; or to appeal to the nation through an extraordinary deputation. He then argues that representation belongs to citizens only through their common qualities: corporate interests must be kept out of the legislature, the law protects unequal property but grants no privileges, and the privileged, enemies of the common right, should be neither electors nor eligible. He ends defending the philosopher’s duty to publish the whole truth.