ition with regard to the wealthy,
powerful families in their own estate and to the rich burghers; they
married the fortunes of the latter and accepted their hospitality, but
otherwise treated them with the same exclusive condescension as that
displayed to themselves by the great.

But if the estate of the clergy and the estate of the nobility were
alike divided in character and interests, this was still more true of
the burghers. In 1614, at the close of the middle ages, the third
estate had been little concerned with the agricultural laborer. For
various reasons this class had been gradually emancipated until now
there was less serfage in France than elsewhere; more than a quarter,
perhaps a third, of the land was in the hands of peasants and other
small proprietors. This, to be sure, was economically disastrous, for
over-division of land makes tillage unprofitable, and these very men
were the taxpayers. The change had been still more marked in the
denizens of towns. During the last two centuries the wealthy burgesses
had grown still more wealthy in the expansion of trade, commerce, and
manufactures; many had struggled and bought their way into the ranks
of the nobility. The small tradesmen had remained smug, hard to move,
and resentful of change. But there was a large body of men unknown to
previous constitutions, and growing ever larger with the increase in
population--intelligent and unintelligent artisans, half-educated
employees in workshops, mills, and trading-houses, ever recruited from
the country population, seeking such intermittent occupation as the
towns afforded. The very lowest stratum of this society was then, as
now, most dangerous; idle, dissipated, and unscrupulous, they were yet
sufficiently educated to discuss and disseminate perilous doctrines,
and were often most ready in speech and fertile in resource.

This comparative well-being of a nation, devoted like the ancient
Greeks to novelty, avid of great ideas and great deeds, holding
opinions not merely for the pleasure of intellectual gymnastics but
logically and with a view to their realization, sensitive to
influences like the deep impressions made on their thinkers by the
English and American revolutions--such relative comfort with its
attendant opportunities for discussion was not the least of many
causes which made France the vanguard in the great revolution which
had already triumphed in theory throughout the continent and was
eventually to