[42] [The use of the French term _bourgeois_, here and in some other passages translated ‘middle classes,’ is a further proof of the estimation of the power once exercised by that class in the community. In English the corresponding term _burgess_ has remained inseparable from the exercise of municipal rights; and we have no distinctive appellation, irrespective of political rights, for the large class which separates the nobility from the populace. That class is, in fact, in this country, both socially and politically, _the people_.] CHAPTER X. THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL LIBERTY AND THE ESTRANGEMENT OF CLASSES WERE THE CAUSES OF ALMOST ALL THE DISORDERS WHICH LED TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD SOCIETY OF FRANCE. Of all the disorders which attacked the constitution of society in France, as it existed before the Revolution, and led to the dissolution of that society, that which I have just described was the most fatal. But I must pursue the inquiry to the source of so dangerous and strange an evil, and show how many other evils took their origin from the same cause. If the English had, from the period of the Middle Ages, altogether lost, like the French, political freedom and all those local franchises which cannot long exist without it, it is highly probable that each of the different classes of which the English aristocracy is composed would have seceded from the rest, as was the case in France and more or less all over the continent, and that all those classes together would have separated themselves from the people. But freedom compelled them always to remain within reach of each other, so as to combine their strength in time of need.