Siéyès’ nation was a nation of twenty-five millions. The first two orders numbered together about 1,500,000 persons. That they were a minority was in itself no ground for crushing them. Reason and justice might as well lie on the side of the minority as on that of the majority. But Siéyès’ arguments were in existing circumstances perfectly sound and unanswerable. The nobles represented no national interests, and had long ceased to be the organs through which the nation expressed its wants. To the exercise of political powers they had no claim whatever. Their privileges and prejudices had for years stood in the way of the common good. They were without experience in political life, and as a rule without experience even in matters of government and administration. Their position amongst their fellow-citizens was that of an isolated caste; in short, all the bonds of connection were wanting which cause men to place reliance in others, and to accept them as leaders. The privileges of the clergy and their claims to exercise power as a special order met with as little favour as those of the nobles. Clergy and laity were to stand on exactly the same footing with regard to civil and political rights. The combined influence of sceptical and liberal ideas made men desire to withdraw from the Church all coercive means of maintaining authority. The press was to be free, worship was also to be free, and nonconformists were to enjoy full civil and political rights. Equality was to prevail within the Church as well as within the State. The government of the Church was to be reorganised on a democratic basis, and the Pope’s authority, as head of the Church, to be confined to matters purely spiritual. Although the provincial nobles were jealous of the great lords, and desired to deprive them of whatever advantages they possessed above themselves, yet the nobility as a body still formed a caste, of which all members, except a small minority, were united in asserting rights and claiming privileges in opposition to the rest of the nation. The clergy, on the contrary, though held together by common interests as ecclesiastics, were torn asunder by the same class divisions that prevailed amongst laymen. The upper clergy, who were all of noble birth, proposed to maintain authority in their own hands and to effect ecclesiastical reform from inside; while the curés, who came from the ranks of the people, demanded State interference, as the only means of securing for themselves a full representation in Church councils, and a just share in the distribution of Church property. ♦Double representation of the Third Estate.♦