ves
beside the first two orders, the new comer, by virtue of the situation
and rank occupied, took the name of third order; and as our fathers used
to speak of the third denier (_tiers denier_), and the third day (_tierce
journee_), so they must have spoken of the (_tiers-etat_) third estate.
It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that the expression
became common; but I am inclined to believe that it existed in the
beginning of the fourteenth.

"For an instant I had imagined, in the course of my researches, that,
under King John, the ordinances had designated the good towns by the name
of third estate. I very soon saw my mistake; but you will see how near I
found myself to the expression of which we are seeking the origin. Four
times, in the great ordinance of December, 1335, the deputies wrest from
the king a promise that in the next assemblies the resolutions shall be
taken according to the unanimity of the orders 'without two estates, if
they be of one accord, being able to bind the _third._' At first sight it
might be supposed that the deputies of the towns had an understanding to
secure themselves from the dangers of common action on the part of the
clergy and noblesse, but a more attentive examination made me fly back to
a more correct opinion: it is certain that the three orders had combined
for mutual protection against an alliance of any two of them. Besides,
the States of 1576 saw how the clergy readopted to their profit, against
the two laic orders, the proposition voted in 1355. It is beyond a doubt
that this doctrine served to keep the majority from oppressing the
minority whatever may have been its name. Only, in point of fact, it was
most frequently the third estate that must have profited by the
regulation.

"In brief, we may, before the fifteenth century, make suppositions, but
they are no more than mere conjectures. It was at the great States of
Tours, in 1468, that, for the first time, the third order bore the name
which has been given to it by history."

The fact was far before its name. Had the third estate been centred
entirely in the communes at strife with their lords, had the fate of
burgherdom in France depended on the communal liberties won in that
strife, we should see, at the end of the thirteenth century, that element
of French society in a state of feebleness and decay. But it was far
otherwise. The third estate drew its origin and nourishment from all
sorts of source