ct its
mandate and allows no barriers to be interposed against it. It requires
its deputies accordingly to vote "not by orders but each by himself and
conjointly."--"In case the deputies of the clergy or of the nobility
should refuse to deliberate in common and individually, the deputies
of the Third-Estate, representing twenty-four millions of men, able and
obliged to declare itself the National Assembly not-withstanding the
scission of the representation of 400,000 persons, will propose to the
King in concert with those among the Clergy and the Nobility disposed
to join them, their assistance in providing for the necessities of the
State, and the taxes thus assented to shall be apportioned among all the
subjects of the king without distinction."[4348]--Do not object that
a people thus mutilated becomes a mere crowd, that leaders cannot be
improvised, that it is difficult to dispense with natural guides, that,
considering all things, this Clergy and this Nobility still form a
select group, that two-fifths of the soil is in their hands, that
one-half of the intelligent and cultivated class of men are in their
ranks, that they are exceedingly well-disposed and that old historic
bodies have always afforded to liberal constitutions their best
supports. According to the principle enunciated by Rousseau we are
not to value men but to count them. In politics numbers only are
respectable; neither birth, nor property, nor function, nor capacity, is
a title to be considered; high or low, ignorant or learned, a general, a
soldier, or a hod-carrier, each individual of the social army is a unit
provided with a vote; wherever a majority is found there is the right.
Hence, the Third-Estate puts forth its right as incontestable, and, in
its turn, it proclaims with Louis XIV, "I am the State."

This principle once admitted or enforced, they thought, all will go
well.

"It seemed," says an eye-witness,[4349] "as if we were about to be
governed by men of the golden age. This free, just and wise people,
always in harmony with itself, always clear-sighted in choosing its
ministers, moderate in the use of its strength and power, never could be
led away, never deceived, never under the dominion of; or enslaved by,
the authority which it confided. Its will would fashion the laws and the
law would constitute its happiness."

The nation is to be regenerated, a phrase found in all writings and
in every mouth. At Nangis, Arthur Young finds thi