What is
necessary that a nation should subsist and prosper?
Individual
effort and public functions.
Individual Efforts
All individual efforts may be included in for classes:
1. Since the earth and the waters furnish crude products for the needs
of man, the first class, in logical sequence, will be that of all families
which devote themselves to agricultural labor.
2. Between
the first sale of products and their consumption or use, a new manipulation,
more or less repeated, adds to these products a second value more or
less composite. In this manner human industry succeeds in perfecting
the gifts of nature, and the crude product increases two-fold, ten-fold,
one hundred-fold in value. Such are the efforts of the second class.
3. Between
production and consumption, as well as between the various stages of
production, a group of intermediary agents establish themselves, useful
both to producers and consumer; these are the merchants and brokers:
the brokers who, comparing incessantly the demands of time and place,
speculate upon the profit of retention and transportation; merchants
who are charged with distribution, in the last analysis, either at wholesale
or at retail. This species of utility characterizes the third class.
4. Outside
of these three classes of productive and useful citizens, who are occupied
with real objects of consumption and use, there is also need in a society
of a series of efforts and pains, whose objects are directly useful
or agreeable to the individual. This fourth class embraces all those
who stand between the most distinguished and liberal professions and
the less esteemed services of domestics.
Such are the efforts which sustain society. Who puts them forth? The
Third Estate.
Public Functions
Public functions may be classified equally well, in the present state
of affairs, under four recognized heads; the sword, the robe, the church
and the administration. It would be superfluous to take them up one
by one, for the purpose of showing that everywhere the Third Estate
attends to nineteen-twentieths of them, with this distinction; that
it is laden with all that which is really painful, with all the burdens
which the privileged classes refuse to carry. Do we give the Third Estate
credit for this? That this might come about, it would be necessary that
the Third Estate should refuse to fill these places, or that it should
be less ready to exercise their functions. The facts are well known.
Meanwhile they have dared to impose a prohibition upon the order of
the Third Estate. They have said to it: "Whatever may be your services,
whatever may be your abilities, you shall go thus far; you may not pass
beyond!" Certain rare exceptions, properly regarded, are but a
mockery, and the terms which are indulged in on such occasions, one
insult the more.
If this exclusion is a social crime against the Third Estate; if it
is a veritable act of hostility, could it perhaps be said that it is
useful to the public weal? Alas! who is ignorant of the effects of monopoly?
If it discourages those whom it rejects, is it not well known that it
tends to render less able those whom it favors? Is it not understood
that every employment from which free competition is removed, becomes
dear and less effective?
In setting aside any function whatsoever to serve as an appanage for
a distinct class among citizens, is it not to be observed that it is
no longer the man alone who does the work that it is necessary to reward,
but all the unemployed members of that same caste, and also the entire
families of those whoa re employed as well as those who are not? Its
it not to be remarked that since the government has become the patrimony
of a particular class, it has been distended beyond all measure; places
have been created not on account of the necessities of the governed,
but in the interests of the governing, etc., etc.? Has not attention
been called to the fact that this order of things, which is basely and--I
even presume to say--beastly respectable with us, when we find it in
reading the History of Ancient Egypt or the accounts of Voyages to the
Indies, is despicable, monstrous, destructive of all industry, the enemy
of social progress; above all degrading to the human race in general,
and particularly intolerable to Europeans, etc., etc? But I must leave
these considerations, which, if they increase the importance of the
subject and throw light upon it, perhaps, along with the new light,
slacken our progress.
It suffices here to have made it clear that the pretended utility of
a privileged order for the public service is nothing more than a chimera;
that with it all that which is burdensome in this service is performed
by the Third Estate; that without it the superior places would be infinitely
better filled; that they naturally ought to be the lot and the recompense
of ability and recognized services, and that if privileged persons have
come to usurp all the lucrative and honorable posts, it is a hateful
injustice to the rank and file of citizens and at the same a treason
to the public.
Who then shall dare to say that the Third Estate has not within itself
all that is necessary for the formation of a complete nation? It is
the strong and robust man who has one arm still shackled. If the privileged
order should be abolished, the nation would be nothing less, but something
more. Therefore, what is the Third Estate? Everything; but an everything
shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order?
Everything, but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing can succeed
without it, everything would be infinitely better without the others.
It is not sufficient to show that privileged persons, far from being
useful to the nation, cannot but enfeeble and injure it; it is necessary
to prove further that the noble order does not enter at all into the
social organization; that it may indeed be a burden upon the nation,
but that it cannot of itself constitute a nation.
In the first place, it is not possible in the number of all the elementary
parts of a nation to find a place for the caste of nobles. I know that
there are individuals in great number whom infirmities, incapacity,
incurable laziness, or the weight of bad habits render strangers tot
eh labors of society. The exception and the abuse are everywhere found
beside the rule. But it will be admitted that he less there are of these
abuses, the better it will be for the State. The worst possible arrangement
of all would be where not alone isolated individuals, but a whole class
of citizens should take pride in remaining motionless in the midst of
the general movement, and should consume the best part of the product
without bearing any part in its production. Such a class is surely estranged
to the nation by its indolence.
The noble order is not less estranged from the generality of us by its
civil and political prerogatives.
What is a nation? A body of associates, living under a common law, and
represented by the same legislature, etc.
Is it not evident that the noble order has privileges and expenditures
which it dares to call its rights, but which are apart from the rights
of the great body of citizens? It departs there from the common law.
So its civil rights make of it an isolated people in the midst of the
great nation. This is truly imperium in imperia.
In regard to its political rights, these also it exercises apart. It
has its special representatives, which are not charged with securing
the interests of the people. The body of its deputies sit apart; and
when it is assembled in the same hall with the deputies of simple citizens,
it is none the less true that its representation is essentially distinct
and separate: it is a stranger to the nation, in the first place, by
its origin, since its commission is not derived from the people; then
by its object, which consists of defending not the general, but the
particular interest.
The Third Estate embraces then all that which belongs to the nation;
and all that which is not the Third Estate, cannot be regarded as being
of the nation.
What is
the Third Estate?
It is the whole.