_Meeting of the States-General--Predominant Influence of the Tiers Etat--Property not represented sufficiently in that Body--General character of the Members--Disposition of the Estate of the Nobles--And of the Clergy--Plan of forming the Three Estates into two Houses--Its advantages--It fails--The Clergy unite with the Tiers Etat, which assumes the title of the National Assembly--They assume the task of Legislation, and declare all former Fiscal Regulations illegal--They assert their determination to continue their Sessions--Royal Sitting--Terminates in the Triumph of the Assembly--Parties in that Body--Mounier--Constitutionalists--Republicans--Jacobins--Orleans._ [Sidenote: INFLUENCE OF THE TIERS ETAT.] The Estates-General of France met at Versailles on the 5th May, 1789, and that was indisputably the first day of the Revolution. The Abbé Siêyes, in a pamphlet which we have mentioned, had already asked, "What was the Third Estate?--It was _the whole nation_. What had it been hitherto in a political light?--Nothing. What was it about to become presently?--Something." Had the last answer been _Every thing_, it would have been nearer the truth; for it soon appeared that this Third Estate, which, in the year 1614, the Nobles had refused to acknowledge even as a younger brother[67] of their order, was now, like the rod of the prophet, to swallow up all those who affected to share its power. Even amid the pageantry with which the ceremonial of the first sitting abounded, it was clearly visible that the wishes, hopes, and interest of the public, were exclusively fixed upon the representatives of the Commons. The rich garments and floating plumes of the Nobility, and the reverend robes of the Clergy, had nothing to fix the public eye; their sounding and emphatic titles had nothing to win the ear; the recollection of the high feats of the one, and long sanctified characters of the other order, had nothing to influence the mind of the spectators. All eyes were turned on the members of the Third Estate, in a plebeian and humble costume, corresponding to their lowly birth and occupation, as the only portion of the assembly from whom they looked for the lights and the counsels which the time demanded.[68] It would be absurd to assert, that the body which thus engrossed the national attention was devoid of talents to deserve it. On the contrary, the Tiers Etat contained a large proportion of the learning, the intelligence, and the eloquence of the kingdom; but unhappily it was composed of men of theory rather than of practice, men more prepared to change than to preserve or repair; and, above all, of men, who, generally speaking, were not directly concerned in the preservation of peace and order, by possessing a large property in the country.