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What is the Third Estate?
The plan of this pamphlet is very simple. We have three questions to ask:

1st. What is the third estate? Everything.

2nd. What his it been heretofore in the political order? Nothing.

3rd. What does it demand? To become something therein.

We shall see if the answers are correct. Then we shall examine the measures that have been tried and those which must be taken in order that the third estate may in fact become something. Thus we shall state:

4th. What the ministers have attempted, and what the privileged classes themselves propose in its favor.

5th. What ought to have been done.

6th. Finally, what remains to be done in order that the third estate may take its rightful place ....

Who, then, would dare to say that the third estate has not within itself all that is necessary to constitute a complete nation? If the privileged order were abolished, the nation would not be something less but something more. Thus, what is the third estate? Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? Everything; but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing can progress without it; everything would proceed infinitely better without the others ....

Let us examine its position in the Estates General.

Who have been its so-called representatives? The ennobled or those privileged for a period of years. These false deputies have not even always been freely elected by the people. Sometimes in the Estates General, and almost always in the provincial Estates, the representation of the people has been regarded as a perquisite of certain posts or offices ....

Let us sum up: the third estate has not heretofore had real representatives in the Estates General. Thus its political rights are null ....

The true petitions of this order may be appreciated only through the authentic claims directed to the government by the large municipalities of the kingdom. What is indicated therein? That the people wishes to be something, and, in truth, the very least that is possible. It wishes to have real representatives in the Estates General, that is to say, deputies drawn from its order, who are competent to be interpreters of its will and defenders of its interests. But what will it avail it to be present at the Estates General if the dominating interest there is contrary to its own! Its presence would only consecrate the opposition of which it would be the eternal victim. Thus, it is indeed certain that it cannot come to vote at the Estates General unless it is to have in that body an influence at least equal to that of the privileged classes; and it demands a number of representatives equal to that of the first two orders together. Finally, this equality of representation would become completely illusory if every chamber voted separately. The third estate demands, then, that the votes be taken by head and not by order. This is the essence of those claims so alarming to the privileged classes, because they believed that thereby the reform of abuses would become inevitable ....

In such a state of affairs, what must the third estate do if it wishes to gain possession of its political rights in a manner beneficial to the nation? There are two ways of attaining this objective. In following the first, the third estate much assemble apart: it will not meet with the nobility and clergy at all; it will not remain with them, either by order or by head. I pray that they will keep on mind the enormous difference between the assembly of the third estate and that of the other two orders. The first represents 25,000,000 men, and deliberates concerning the interests of the nation. The two others, were they to unite, have the powers of only about 200,000 individuals, and think only of their privileges. The third estate alone, they say, cannot constitute the Estates General. Well! So much the better! it will form a National Assembly ...

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