I will suppose that a burgher of the twelfth century had suddenly appeared amongst us in 1789, at the moment that the terrible regeneration of France commenced, and that there had been given him to read (for we must endow him with the power to read) one of those pamphlets which then so violently agitated the minds of men; for example, the pamphlet of M. Sieyes--'What is the third estate?' Let us imagine his eyes falling on this phrase--the main point of the publication--'The third estate is the French nation, less the nobility and the clergy.' I ask, what impression would such a phrase produce on the mind of this man? Would he understand it? The words, '_the French nation_,' would be beyond his comprehension, for they would convey no idea of anything known to him, or existing in his own day; but if he should understand the phrase--if he had a clear conception of that sovereignty attributed to the third estate over all society, it would assuredly appear to him a nearly insane and impious proposition, so much would it be in contradiction to what he had seen, and to the entire bent of his ideas and sentiments. Now, ask this bewildered burgher to follow you, and conduct him to some of the then boroughs of France, to Rheims, Beauvais, Laon, or Noyon. A surprise of a different nature would here await him. On entering the town he would perceive no towers, no ramparts, no burgher guard, no means of defence, but all open and exposed to the first hostile occupant. The safety of such a municipality would appear to him very uncertain and weakly guaranteed. Penetrating into the interior, and inquiring into what was there passing, into the manner in which it was governed, and into the condition of the inhabitants, he would be told that there was a power outside which taxed them as it pleased, summoned their militia, and sent it to distant wars, regardless of their consent; that there were magistrates, mayors, and sheriffs, whom the burgesses had no share in nominating, and that the affairs of the borough were not decided in the borough itself, but that a man named by the king, an intendant, alone and from a distance, administered them. Furthermore, he would be told that the inhabitants had no right to assemble and deliberate in common upon what concerned them--that the bell of their church did not summon them to the public square. The burgess of the twelfth century would be perfectly at a loss to comprehend these matters. First he was bewildered and dismayed at the grandeur and importance that the burgher community, the third estate, attributed to itself, and now he finds it, upon its own hearthstone, in a state of servitude, weakness, and nullity, worse than anything he had known as most disastrous. Passing from one contemplation to the other--from the idea of a sovereign commonalty to the survey of its powerlessness--how could he comprehend and reconcile the difference, or disentangle his mind from confusion? {124}