y declared, "in
presence of the said king, Philip of Valois, who assented thereto, that
there should be no power to impose or levy talliage in France if urgent
necessity or evident utility did not require it, and then only by grant
of the people of the estates."

In order to properly understand the French third estate and its
importance, more is required than to look on at its birth; a glance must
be taken at its grand destiny and the results at which it at last
arrived. Let us, therefore, anticipate centuries and get a glimpse, now
at once, of that upon which the course of events from the fourteenth to
the nineteenth century will shed full light.

Taking the history of France in its entirety and under all its phases,
the third estate has been the most active and determining element in the
process of Freneh civilization. If we follow it in its relation with the
general government of the country, we see it at first allied for six
centuries to the kingship, struggling without cessation against the
feudal aristocracy and giving predominance in place thereof to a single
central power, pure monarchy, closely bordering, though with some
frequently repeated but rather useless reservations, on absolute
monarchy. But, so soon as it had gained this victory and brought about
this revolution, the third estate went in pursuit of a new one, attacking
that single power to the foundation of which it had contributed so much
and entering upon the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional
monarchy. Under whatever aspect we regard it during these two great
enterprises, so different one from the other, whether we study the
progressive formation of French society or that of its government, the
third estate is the most powerful and the most persistent of the forces
which have influenced French civilization.

This fact is unique in the history of the world. We recognize in the
career of the chief nations of Asia and ancient Europe nearly all the
great facts which have agitated France; we meet in them mixture of
different races, conquest of people by people, immense inequality between
classes, frequent changes in the forms of government and extent of public
power; but nowhere is there any appearance of a class which, starting
from the very lowest, from being feeble, despised, and almost
imperceptible at its origin, rises by perpetual motion and by labor
without respite, strengthens itself from period to period, acquires in
succ