It first of all found despotism instead of liberty; and when the liberty returned, the third estate found itself face to face with a twofold hostility: that of its adversaries of the old regimen and that of absolute democracy, which, in its turn, claimed to be everything.

Excessive pretension entails unmanageable opposition, and excites unbridled ambition.

What there was in the words of Abbe Sieyes, in 1789, was not the truth as it is in history; it was a lying programme of revolution.

Taking the history of France in its totality and in all its phases, the third estate has been the most active and most decisive element in French civilization.

If we follow it in its relations with the general government of the country, we see it first of all allied during six centuries with the kingship, struggling pauselessly against the feudal aristocracy, and giving the prevalence in place of that to a central and unique power, pure monarchy to wit, closely approximating, though with certain often-repeated but vain reservations, to absolute monarchy.