Their statutes, written or unwritten, guaranteed to them precious privileges which the other bodies, much weaker, could neither acquire nor preserve.

These were not merely immunities but likewise prerogatives, not alone alleviations of taxation and militia dispensations, but likewise political and administrative liberties, remnants of their primitive sovereignty, with many other positive advantages.

The very least being precedence, preferences, social priority, with an incontestable right to rank, honors, offices, and favors.

Such, notably, were the regions-states possessing their own government (pays d'etats), compared with those which elected the magistrates who apportioned taxation (pays d'election),[3301] the two highest orders, the clergy and the nobles, compared with the third-estate, and the bourgeoisie, and the town corporations compared with the rest of the inhabitants.

On the other hand, opposed to these historical favorites were the historical disinherited, the latter much more numerous and counting by millions--the taxable commons, all subjects without rank or quality, in short, the ordinary run of men, especially the common herd of the towns and particularly of the country, all the more ground down on account of their lower status, along with the Jews lower yet, a sort of foreign class scarcely tolerated, with the Calvinists, not only deprived of the humblest rights but, again, persecuted by the State for the past one hundred years.
All these people, who have been transported far outside of civic relationships by historic right, are brought back, in 1789, by philosophic right.