3. What Does the Third Estate Ask? To Become Something

Its demands must not be judged by the isolated observations of a few authors more or less informed about the rights of man. The Third Estate is still very backward in this respect, I do not say only by comparison with the understanding of those who have studied the social order, but even with that mass of common ideas which forms public opinion. The real petitions of the Third Estate can be judged only by the authentic demands which the great municipalities of the kingdom have addressed to the government. What do we see there? That the people wishes to be something — and, truly, the least that is possible. It wishes to have, 1, real representatives in the Estates-General, that is to say, deputies drawn from its own order, who are able to be the interpreters of its wishes and the defenders of its interests. But what good would it do it to attend the Estates-General if the interest contrary to its own were to predominate there? It would only consecrate by its presence the oppression of which it would be the eternal victim. Thus it is quite certain that it cannot come to vote in the Estates-General unless it is to have there an influence at least equal to that of the privileged; and it asks, 2, for a number of representatives equal to that of the two other orders together. Finally, this equality of representation would become perfectly illusory if each chamber had its separate vote. The Third Estate therefore asks, 3, that votes be taken there by heads and not by orders. That is what these demands come down to, which seem to have sounded the alarm among the privileged; they believed that by this alone the reform of abuses would become unavoidable.

The modest intention of the Third Estate is to have in the Estates-General an influence equal to that of the privileged. I repeat: can it ask for less? And is it not clear that if its influence there is below equality, there can be no hope of its emerging from its political nullity and becoming something?

But what is truly unfortunate is that the three articles that make up the demand of the Third Estate are insufficient to give it that equality of influence which in fact it cannot do without. In vain will it obtain an equal number of representatives drawn from its own order: the influence of the privileged will always come and establish itself, and dominate, in the very sanctuary of the Third Estate. Where are the posts, the employments, the benefices to be given? On which side is the need for protection, and on which side the power to protect? In this single consideration there is enough to make all the friends of the people tremble.

Those of the non-privileged who would seem best fitted by their talents to uphold the interests of their order — are they not brought up in a superstitious or forced respect for the nobility? We know how easily men in general bend to any habits that may become useful to them. They are constantly occupied in improving their lot; and when personal industry cannot advance by honest paths, it throws itself into false ones. We read that among certain ancient peoples children were accustomed to receive their food only after giving themselves to exercises of strength or skill. That was the way to make them excel in them. Among us, the ablest class of the Third Estate is forced, in order to obtain its necessaries, to practise flattery and devote itself to the service of powerful men; a kind of education less honourable, less social, but quite as effective. This unhappy part of the nation has come to form a kind of great antechamber where, constantly occupied with what its masters say or do, it is always ready to sacrifice everything to the fruits it promises itself from the good fortune of pleasing. Seeing such manners, how can one not fear that the qualities most fitted for the defence of the national interest will be prostituted to the defence of prejudices? The boldest defenders of the aristocracy will be found in the order of the Third Estate, among men who, born with much wit and little soul, are as greedy for fortune, for power and for the caresses of the great as they are incapable of feeling the worth of liberty.

Besides the empire of the aristocracy, which in France disposes of everything, and of that feudal superstition which still debases most minds, there is the influence of property: this is natural, and I do not proscribe it; but it will be agreed that it is still entirely to the advantage of the privileged, and that there is good reason to fear it will lend them its powerful support against the Third Estate. The municipalities have too readily believed that it was enough to remove the persons of the privileged from the representation of the people to be safe from the influence of privilege. In the countryside, and everywhere, what lord with any popularity does not have at his command, if he so wishes, an indefinite crowd of men of the people? Calculate the consequences and the repercussions of this first influence, and reassure yourself, if you can, about the results of an assembly which you see far removed from the first electoral meetings, but which is nonetheless a combination of those first elements. The more one considers this subject, the more one perceives the inadequacy of the Third Estate’s three demands. But, such as they are, they have been fiercely attacked: let us examine the pretexts for so odious a hostility.

That the representatives of the Third Estate be chosen only from among the citizens who truly belong to the Third Estate.

We have already explained that, in order truly to belong to the Third Estate, one must be tainted with no kind of privilege, or else must purge oneself of it at once and completely.

The men of the Robe who have attained nobility by a door which they have resolved — nobody knows why — to shut behind them, want at all costs to be in the Estates-General. They have said to themselves: “The nobility does not want us; we do not want the Third Estate; if it were possible for us to form a separate order, that would be admirable; but we cannot. What is to be done? All that remains to us is to maintain the old abuse by which the Third Estate deputed nobles, and in that way we shall satisfy our desires without giving up our pretensions.” All the new nobles, whatever their origin, have hastened to repeat in the same spirit that the Third Estate must be able to depute gentlemen. The old nobility, which calls itself the good one, has not the same interest in preserving this abuse; but it knows how to calculate. It has said: “We shall put our children in the Chamber of Commons; and, all things considered, it is an excellent idea to take upon ourselves the representation of the Third Estate.”

Once the will is firmly decided, reasons, as everyone knows, are never lacking. The old usage, it has been said, must be kept…. An excellent usage, which, in order to represent the Third Estate, has positively excluded it from representation until this moment! The order of the Third Estate has its political rights as it has its civil rights; it must exercise the one as well as the other by itself. What an idea, to distinguish the orders for the benefit of the first two and the misfortune of the third, and to merge them as soon as that too is useful to the first two and harmful to the nation! What a usage to maintain, the one by virtue of which churchmen and nobles could take possession of the chamber of the Third Estate! In good faith, would they consider themselves represented if the Third Estate could invade the deputation of their orders?

To show the vice of a principle, it is permissible to push its consequences as far as they can go. I use this method, and I say: if the people of the three estates may give their mandate indiscriminately to whomever they please, it is possible that there will be only members of a single order in the assembly. Would it be admitted, for example, that the clergy alone could represent the whole nation?

I go further: having charged one order with the confidence of the three estates, let us gather the mandate of all the citizens on a single individual: will it be maintained that a single individual could take the place of the Estates-General? When a principle leads to absurd consequences, it is because it is bad.

It is added that to limit the constituents in their choice is to harm their liberty. I have two replies to make to this supposed difficulty. The first: that it is put forward in bad faith, and I prove it. The domination of the lords over the peasants and the other inhabitants of the countryside is well known; well known, too, are the customary or possible manoeuvres of their numerous agents, including the officers of their courts. Therefore every lord who wishes to influence the first election is, in general, sure of getting himself deputed to the bailliage, where it will then only be a matter of choosing among the lords themselves or among those who have earned their most intimate confidence. Is it for the people’s liberty that you reserve to yourselves the power to surprise and steal its confidence? It is dreadful to hear the sacred name of liberty profaned to hide the designs most contrary to it. No doubt the constituents must be left all their liberty, and that is precisely why it is necessary to exclude from their deputation all the privileged, who are too accustomed to domineering imperiously over the people.

My second reply is direct. There can be no liberty or right without limits, of any kind. In every country the law has fixed definite qualifications without which one can be neither an elector nor eligible. Thus, for example, the law must determine an age below which one is unfit to represent one’s fellow citizens. Thus women are everywhere, rightly or wrongly, kept away from mandates of this kind. It is agreed that a vagrant or a beggar cannot be charged with the political confidence of the people. Would a servant, or anyone in dependence on a master, or an unnaturalised foreigner, be admitted to figure among the representatives of the nation? Political liberty, then, has its limits, as civil liberty does. The only question is whether the condition of ineligibility that the Third Estate demands is not as essential as all those I have just indicated. Now the comparison is entirely in its favour; for a beggar or a foreigner may have no interest opposed to the interest of the Third Estate, whereas the noble and the churchman are, by their condition, friends of the privileges from which they profit. Thus the condition required by the Third Estate is, for it, the most important of all those which the law, in accordance with equity and the nature of things, must place on the choice of representatives.

To bring out this reasoning further, I make a hypothesis. Suppose that France is at war with England, and that everything relating to the hostilities is directed, on our side, by a directory composed of representatives. In that case, I ask, would the provinces be allowed, on the pretext of not offending their liberty, to choose members of the English ministry as their deputies to the directory? Certainly the privileged show themselves no less the enemies of the common order than the English are of the French in time of war. Among the images that multiply and crowd into my brain, I choose one more. If there were to be a general diet of the maritime peoples to regulate the freedom and safety of navigation, do you think that Genoa, Leghorn, Venice, etc., would choose their ministers plenipotentiary among the Barbary corsairs, or that a law would be good which allowed rich pirates to buy or seduce votes at Genoa, etc.? I do not know whether this comparison is exaggerated; but it makes clear, to my mind, what I had to say. For the rest, I hope like anyone else, since enlightenment cannot long remain without effect, that the aristocrats will one day cease to show themselves the Algerines of France.

In consequence of these principles, those of the Third Estate who belong too exclusively to members of the first two orders must not be allowed to be charged with the confidence of the Commons. It is plain that they are unfit for it by their dependent position; and yet, if the exclusion were not formal, the influence of the lords, become useless for themselves, would not fail to be exerted in favour of the people at their disposal. I ask above all that attention be paid to the numerous agents of feudalism. It is to the odious remains of that barbarous regime that we owe the division, still subsisting to the misfortune of France, into three orders hostile to one another. All would be lost if the agents of feudalism were to usurp the deputation of the common order. Who does not know that servants show themselves harsher and bolder in their masters’ interest than the masters themselves? I know that this proscription extends to a great many people, since it concerns in particular all the officers of seigneurial courts, etc.; but here it is the force of things that commands.

Dauphiné has set a great example in this. Like it, we must exclude from eligibility for the Third Estate the men of the fisc and their sureties, those of the administration, etc. As for the farmers of the lands belonging to the first two orders, I too think that in their present condition they are too dependent to vote freely in favour of the common order. But may I not hope that the legislator will one day consent to enlighten himself on the interests of agriculture, of civic spirit and of public prosperity, and that he will at last cease to confuse fiscal harshness with the work of government? Then leases for life on the farmer’s head will be permitted, and even favoured, and we shall regard these farmers, so precious, only as free tenants, very fit indeed to uphold the interests of the nation.

It has been thought to strengthen the difficulty we have just destroyed by asserting that the Third Estate did not have members enlightened enough, courageous enough, etc., to represent it, and that it was necessary to have recourse to the enlightenment of the nobility…. This ridiculous assertion deserves no reply. Consider the available classes of the Third Estate — and, like everyone else, I call available classes those in which some degree of ease allows men to receive a liberal education, to cultivate their reason, in short to take an interest in public affairs. These classes have no other interest than that of the rest of the people. See whether they do not contain enough instructed and honest citizens, worthy in every respect to be good representatives of the nation.

But after all, it is said, what if a bailliage obstinately insists on giving its Third Estate mandate only to a noble or a churchman? If it has confidence in him alone?…

I have already said that there could be no unlimited liberty, and that among all the conditions to be placed on eligibility, the one the Third Estate demanded was the most necessary of all. Let us reply more directly. Suppose a bailliage is absolutely determined to harm itself: should it for that reason have the right to harm others? If I alone am concerned in the acts of my attorney, people may be content to say to me: “So much the worse for you; why did you choose him badly?” But here the deputies of a district are not only the representatives of the bailliage that named them; they are also called to represent the generality of citizens, to vote for the whole kingdom. There must therefore be a common rule, and conditions — even if they displease certain constituents — that can reassure the whole nation against the caprice of a few electors.

That its deputies be equal in number to those of the two privileged orders.

I cannot help repeating it: the timid inadequacy of this demand still bears the mark of the old times. The towns of the kingdom have not sufficiently consulted the progress of enlightenment, or even of public opinion. They would have met with no more difficulty in asking for two votes against one; and perhaps people would then have hastened to offer them the very equality against which such a noisy fight is waged today.

Besides, when one wants to decide a question like this one, one must not be content, as people too often are, to give one’s desire, or one’s will, or usage, as reasons; one must go back to principles. Political rights, like civil rights, must derive from the quality of citizen. This legal property is the same for all, without regard to the greater or lesser real property of which each individual’s fortune or enjoyment may be made up. Every citizen who fulfils the conditions laid down for being an elector has the right to be represented, and his representation cannot be a fraction of another’s representation. This right is one; all exercise it equally, just as all are equally protected by the law they have helped to make. How can one maintain, on the one hand, that the law is the expression of the general will, that is to say of the majority, and claim at the same time that ten individual wills can balance a thousand particular wills? Is that not to risk letting the law be made by the minority? Which is evidently against the nature of things.

If these principles, certain as they are, depart a little too far from common ideas, I shall bring the reader back to a comparison that lies before his eyes. Is it not true that it seems just to everyone that the immense bailliage of Poitou should have more representatives in the Estates-General than the little bailliage of Gex? Why is that? Because, it is said, the population and the contribution of Poitou are much greater than those of Gex. Principles are thus admitted by which the proportion of representatives can be determined. Do you want contribution to decide it? Although we have no certain knowledge of the respective taxation of the orders, it is obvious that the Third Estate bears more than half of it.

As for population, everyone knows the immense superiority of the third order over the first two. Like everyone else, I do not know the true proportion; but, like everyone else, I shall allow myself to make my own calculation.

First, the clergy. We shall count forty thousand parishes, including the annexes, which gives at once the number of curés, including the priests serving the annexes: 40,000.

One may well count one vicar for every four parishes, taking one with another: 10,000.

The number of cathedrals is the same as that of dioceses; at twenty canons each, one with another, including the hundred and forty bishops and archbishops: 2,800.

One may suppose, at a rough guess, that the canons of collegiate churches come to twice as many: 5,600.

After that, it must not be thought that there remain as many ecclesiastical heads as there are simple benefices, abbeys, priories and chapels. It is well enough known that the plurality of benefices is not unknown in France. Bishops and canons are at the same time abbots, priors and chaplains. So as not to count anyone twice, I reckon at three thousand the beneficed clergy not already included in the numbers above: 3,000.

Finally, I suppose about three thousand churchmen, in holy orders of course, holding no benefice of any kind: 3,000.

There remain the monks and the nuns, whose numbers have been falling for thirty years at an accelerating rate. I do not believe there are more than seventeen thousand of them today: 17,000.

Total number of ecclesiastical heads: 81,400.

The nobility. I know only one way of approaching the number of individuals in this order: to take the province where this number is best known and compare it with the rest of France. Brittany is that province; and I note in advance that it is more fertile in nobility than the others, whether because nobles there do not lose their rank by engaging in trade, or because of the privileges that keep families there, etc. In Brittany eighteen hundred noble families are counted. I suppose two thousand, because there are some that do not yet enter the Estates. Reckoning each family at five persons, there are in Brittany ten thousand nobles of every age and sex. Its total population is two million three hundred thousand. This sum is to the population of the whole of France as 1 to 11. We have, then, only to multiply ten thousand by eleven, and we shall have at most a hundred and ten thousand noble heads for the whole kingdom: 110,000.

Therefore, in all, there are not two hundred thousand privileged persons in the first two orders. Compare this number with that of twenty-five or twenty-six million souls, and judge the question.

If one now wishes to reach the same solution by consulting other principles just as incontestable, let us consider that the privileged are to the great body of citizens what exceptions are to the law. Every society must be regulated by common laws and subject to a common order. If you make exceptions to it, they must at least be rare; and in no case can they have the same weight, the same influence on public affairs, as the common rule. It is truly insane to set the interest of the exempt against the great interest of the national mass, as though it were fitted to balance it in any way. For the rest, we shall explain ourselves further on this subject in the sixth chapter. When, in a few years, people come to recall all the difficulties now being put in the way of the Third Estate’s all too modest demand, they will be astonished both at the worthlessness of the pretexts opposed to it and, still more, at the intrepid iniquity that dared to look for them.

Those very people who invoke the authority of facts against the Third Estate could read in them, if they were in good faith, the rule for their own conduct. The existence of a small number of good towns was enough, under Philip the Fair, to form a chamber of Commons in the Estates-General.

Since that time feudal servitude has disappeared, and the countryside has offered a numerous population of new citizens. The towns have multiplied and grown. Commerce and the arts have created in them, so to speak, a multitude of new classes, among which are a great number of well-to-do families, full of well-educated men attached to the commonwealth. Why has this double growth, so far exceeding what the good towns once counted for in the balance of the nation, not induced the same authority to create two new chambers in favour of the Third Estate? Equity and good policy joined in asking for it.

No one dares to be so unreasonable with regard to another kind of growth that France has undergone; I mean the new provinces united to it since the last Estates-General. Nobody dares to say that these new provinces ought not to have representatives of their own beyond those who sat in the Estates of 1614. But do not manufactures and the arts, like territory, offer new wealth, a new contribution and a new population? Why then, when it is a question of an increase so easy to compare with the increase of territory, why, I say, is there a refusal to give it representatives beyond those who sat in the Estates of 1614?

But I am pressing with reasons people who know how to listen only to their interest. Let us offer them a kind of consideration that may touch them more closely. Is it fitting for the nobility of today to keep the language and the bearing it had in the Gothic centuries? And is it fitting for the Third Estate to languish, at the end of the eighteenth century, in the sad and cowardly manners of the old servitude? If the Third Estate knows how to know and respect itself, others will certainly respect it too! Let it be borne in mind that the old relation between the orders has changed on both sides at once. The Third Estate, which had been reduced to nothing, has regained by its industry part of what the injustice of the strongest had stolen from it. Instead of demanding its rights back, it consented to pay for them; they were not restored to it, they were sold to it; it submitted to buying them. But at last, in one way or another, it can put itself in possession of them. It must not be unaware that it is today the national reality, of which it was formerly only the shadow; that during this long change the nobility has ceased to be that monstrous feudal reality which could oppress with impunity; that it is now no more than the shadow of it, and that it is in vain that this shadow still tries to frighten an entire nation — unless that nation wishes to be regarded as the vilest on the globe.

That the Estates-General vote not by orders, but by heads.

This question may be looked at in three ways: in the spirit of the Third Estate, according to the interest of the privileged, and finally according to sound principles. From the first point of view, there would be no use adding anything to what we have already said; it is clear that for the Third Estate this demand is a necessary consequence of the other two.

The privileged fear equality of influence in the third order, and they declare it unconstitutional; this conduct is all the more striking in that until now they have been two against one without finding anything unconstitutional in that unjust superiority. They feel very deeply the need to keep the veto over everything that might be contrary to their interest. I shall not repeat the arguments with which twenty writers have beaten down this pretension and the argument from the old forms. I have only one observation to make. There are certainly abuses in France; these abuses profit someone; it is hardly the Third Estate they benefit, but it is above all the Third Estate they harm. Now I ask whether, in this state of things, it is possible to destroy any abuse so long as the veto is left to those who profit from it. All justice would be without force; everything would have to be expected from the pure generosity of the privileged. Would that be the idea one has of the social order?

If we now wish to consider the same subject independently of any particular interest, and according to the principles fitted to enlighten it, that is to say according to those that form the science of the social order, we shall see the question take on a new aspect. I maintain that neither the demand of the Third Estate nor the defence of the privileged can be accepted without overturning the most certain notions. I certainly do not accuse the good towns of the kingdom of having had that intention. They wanted to come nearer to their rights by claiming at least a balance between the two influences; and they have, besides, professed excellent truths: for it is certain that the veto of one order over the others would be a right fitted to paralyse everything in a country where interests are so opposed; it is certain that by not voting by heads one risks mistaking the true majority, which would be the greatest of drawbacks, because the law would be radically null. These truths are incontestable. But can the three orders, as they are constituted, unite to vote by heads? That is the real question. No. If true principles are consulted, they cannot vote in common; they can do so neither by heads nor by orders. Whatever proportion you adopt between them, it cannot fulfil the aim proposed, which would be to bind the whole body of representatives by one common will. This assertion no doubt needs development and proof. Let me be allowed to defer these to the sixth chapter. I do not wish to displease those moderate persons who are always afraid that truth may show itself at the wrong moment. They must first be brought to admit that the situation today, solely through the fault of the privileged, is such that it is time to make up one’s mind, and to say what is true and just in all its force.