w,
and come to Paris with a secular head, of the most irrefragable sort,
to ask three questions, and answer them: What is the Third
Estate? All.--What has it hitherto been in our form of government?
Nothing.--What does it want? To become Something.

D'Orleans,--for be sure he, on his way to Chaos, is in the thick of
this,--promulgates his Deliberations; (Deliberations a prendre pour les
Assemblees des Bailliages.) fathered by him, written by Laclos of the
Liaisons Dangereuses. The result of which comes out simply: 'The Third
Estate is the Nation.' On the other hand, Monseigneur d'Artois, with
other Princes of the Blood, publishes, in solemn Memorial to the King,
that if such things be listened to, Privilege, Nobility, Monarchy,
Church, State and Strongbox are in danger. (Memoire presente au Roi, par
Monseigneur Comte d'Artois, M. le Prince de Conde, M. le Duc de Bourbon,
M. le Duc d'Enghien, et M. le Prince de Conti. (Given in Hist. Parl. i.
256.)) In danger truly: and yet if you do not listen, are they out
of danger? It is the voice of all France, this sound that rises.
Immeasurable, manifold; as the sound of outbreaking waters: wise were
he who knew what to do in it,--if not to fly to the mountains, and hide
himself?

How an ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government, sitting there on such
principles, in such an environment, would have determined to demean
itself at this new juncture, may even yet be a question. Such a
Government would have felt too well that its long task was now drawing
to a close; that, under the guise of these States-General, at length
inevitable, a new omnipotent Unknown of Democracy was coming into being;
in presence of which no Versailles Government either could or should,
except in a provisory character, continue extant. To enact which
provisory character, so unspeakably important, might its whole
faculties but have sufficed; and so a peaceable, gradual, well-conducted
Abdication and Domine-dimittas have been the issue!

This for our ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government. But for the actual
irrational Versailles Government? Alas, that is a Government existing
there only for its own behoof: without right, except possession; and now
also without might. It foresees nothing, sees nothing; has not so much
as a purpose, but has only purposes,--and the instinct whereby all that
exists will struggle to keep existing. Wholly a vortex; in which vain
counsels, hallucinations, falsehoods, intrigues, and