ick
man's body must be assigned to a malignant ulcer that is undermining and
tormenting it. . . to the loathsome disease that is consuming the living
flesh."--The solution is self-evident: let us eradicate the ulcer, or at
least sweep away the vermin. The Third-Estate, in itself and by itself,
is "a complete nation," requiring no organ, needing no aid to subsist or
to govern itself, and which will recover its health on ridding itself of
the parasites infesting its skin.

"What is the Third-Estate?" says Sieyes, "everything. What, thus far, is
it in the political body?[4346] Nothing. What does it demand? To become
something."

Not something but actually everything. Its political ambition is as
great as its social ambition, and it aspires to authority as well as to
equality. If privileges are an evil that of the king is the worst for
it is the greatest, and human dignity, wounded by the prerogative of the
noble, perishes under the absolutism of the king. Of little consequence
is it that he scarcely uses it, and that his government, deferential
to public opinion, is that of a hesitating and indulgent parent.
Emancipated from real despotism, the Third-Estate becomes excited
against possible despotism, imagining itself in slavery in consenting to
remain subject. A proud spirit has recovered itself, become erect, and,
the better to secure its rights, is going to claim all rights. To the
people who since antiquity has been subject to masters, it is so sweet,
so intoxicating to put themselves in their places, to put the former
masters in their place, to say to himself, they are my representatives,
to regard himself a member of the sovereign power, king of France in his
individual sphere, the sole legitimate author of all rights and of all
functions!--In conformity with the doctrines of Rousseau the registers
of the Third-Estate unanimously insist on a constitution for France;
none exists, or at least the one she possesses is of no value. Thus far
"the conditions of the social compact have been ignored;"[4347] now that
they have been discovered they must be written out. To say, with the
nobles according to Montesquieu, that the constitution exists, that its
great features need not be changed, that it is necessary only to reform
abuses, that the States-General exercise only limited power, that they
are incompetent to substitute another regime for the monarchy, is not
true. Tacitly or expressly, the Third-Estate refuses to restri