eigned in
any quarter, by announcing their willingness to abandon all the exclusive
privileges and exemptions which they had hitherto possessed, and which
were notoriously one chief cause of the generally prevailing discontent.

But the party which had originated the clamor for the States-general, now,
encouraged by their success, put forward two fresh demands; the first,
that the number of the representatives of the Commons should equal that of
both the other orders put together, which they called "the duplication of
the Third Estate;" the second, that the three orders should meet and vote
as one united body in one chamber; the two proposition taken together
being manifestly calculated and designed to throw the whole power into the
hands of the Commons.

Necker had great doubts about the propriety and safety of the first
proposal, and no doubt at all of the danger of the second. His own
judgment was that the wisest plan would be to order the clergy and nobles
to unite in an Upper Chamber, so as in some degree to resemble the British
House of Lords; while the Third Estate, in a Lower Chamber, would be a
tolerably faithful copy of our House of Commons. But he could never bring
himself to risk his popularity by opposing what he regarded as the opinion
of the masses. He was alarmed by the political clubs which were springing
up in Paris; one, whose president was the Duc d'Orleans, assuming the
significant and menacing title of Les Enrages;[16] and by the vast number
of pamphlets which were circulated both in the capital and the chief towns
of the provinces by thousands,[17] every writer of which put himself
forward as a legislator,[18] and of which the vast majority advocated what
they called the rights of the Third Estate, in most violent language; and,
finally, he adopted the course which is a great favorite with vain and
weak men, and which he probably represented to himself as a compromise
between unqualified concession and unyielding resistance, though, every
one possessed of the slightest penetration could see that it practically
surrendered both points: he advised the king to issue his edict that the
number of representatives to be returned to the States-general should be
twelve hundred, half of whom were to be returned by the Commons, a quarter
by the clergy, and a quarter by the nobles;[19] and to postpone the
decision as to the number of the chambers till the Assembly should meet,
when he proposed to allow the St