Necker’s return to office was greeted with a burst of applause from one end of France to the other. His financial ability was relied on to stave off bankruptcy, and it was known that he had always opposed the court, and that he now desired the meeting of the States-General. But his popularity was due to those causes alone; not to any proof that he had given or could give of his fitness to direct the royal policy. As he failed to comprehend the real causes of the impending revolution, he would be unable to moderate its violence. ♦Pamphlets and cahiers.♦ The hopes and desires of every class found expression first in pamphlets, and subsequently in the _cahiers_ or petitions of grievances drawn up by electoral assemblies to be laid before the States. The importance and necessity of reform was generally admitted, except where special interests or class prejudices made men averse to change. Thus nobles combated the conservative tendencies of ecclesiastics, ecclesiastics the conservative tendencies of nobles. Induced by pressure of public opinion the nobles mostly declared their willingness to admit the principle of equality of taxation. But agreement went no further. Between the two privileged orders and the body of the nation a gulf was fixed, of bridging which no hope existed. That which the nobles had in view by the meeting of the States was the establishment of constitutional monarchy, based on aristocratical institutions and insuring political and social predominance to their own order. The aim of the middle and working classes was absolutely to destroy every distinction which gave to nobles and ecclesiastics a position apart in the State. The members of the upper orders were not only to bear their fair share of taxation, but to submit to the same law, and to stand in all respects on exactly the same level as the mass of their fellow-citizens. A pamphlet written by the Abbé Siéyès, which gave clear articulation to the thought in men’s minds, acquired for its author European celebrity. What, he asked, is the Third Estate?--Everything. What hitherto has it been in the State?--Nothing. He then proceeded to argue that the Third Estate, in other words the people of France with the exception of the nobles, formed a complete nation by themselves; that by them all useful work was done; and that the nobility was merely an excrescence, preventing the growth and development of national life. The Third Estate is, he said, a nation fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the nobility?--A free and flourishing nation.