Third Estate

With the First Estate being the clergy and the Second Estate being the nobility the Third Estate encompassed the rest.  In this sense they made up nearly the entirety of the French population.

The cities of France were filled with skilled and unskilled workers who made up the urban Third Estate.  Those more skilled workers first had to belong to a guild if they were to work in their trade.  Some of these individuals would own their own business others worked for large businesses which could be owned by wealthier members of the Third Estate or newly ennobled  subjects who had purchased their honours.  Subjects of the cities were dependent on the grain supplied from the countryside poor harvests led to rise in the prices of bread which resulted in hunger and political instability.  Amongst the richer Third Estate were the bourgeois the lawyers merchants and the like.  This class had begun to despair at how their productivity was not matched by representation.  They had little in the way of political rights and thirsted for some say in how their high taxes should be spent.

Rural France was the home of the peasant who made up 80% of the total population.  Most of these farmers were feudal tenant farmers working on someone else’s land.  These peasants were taxed not just by the crown but also by their local landlord.  Many of these peasants lived a very subsistence based lifestyle and in times of famine thousands would die.  The wealthier farmers who owned their own land had more freedom but were certainly in the minority.  The wealthier farmers had more to lose if government instituted any form of controls of prices on grain.

Germaine De Staël on the makeup of the Three Estates .  Taken from Considerations on the Principle events of the French Revolution, Germaine De Staël, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis (2008) p118

The Estates of General of France were, as I have just mentioned, divided into three orders- the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate- and accustomed to deliberate separately, like three great nations: each presented its grievances to the King, and each confined itself to its particular interests, which had, according to circumstances, more or less connection with the interests of the public at large.  In point of numbers, the Third Estate comprised almost the whole nation, the two whole other orders forming scarcely a hundredth part of it.  Having gained greatly in relative importance in the course of the last two centuries, the Third Estate demanded, in 1789, that the mercantile body, or the towns, without reference to the country, should have enough deputies to render the number of the representatives of their body equal to that of the two other orders together; and this demand was supported by motives and circumstances of the greatest weight.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p2

Public services can also, at present, be divided into four known categories, the army, the law, the Church and the bureaucracy. It needs no detailed analysis to show that the Third Estate everywhere constitutes nineteen twentieths of them, except that it is loaded with all the really arduous work, all the tasks which the privileged order refuses to perform. Only the well paid and honorific posts are filled by members of the privileged order. Are we to give them credit for this? We could do so only if the Third Estate was unable or unwilling to fill these posts. We know the answer. Nevertheless, the privileged have dared to preclude the Third Estate. “No matter how useful you are,” they said, “no matter how able you are, you can go so far and no further. Honors are not for the like 0f you.” The rare exceptions, noticeable as they are bound to be, are mere mockery, and the sort of language allowed on such occasions is an additional insult.   If this exclusion is a social crime, a veritable act of war against the Third Estate, can it be said at least to be useful to the commonwealth? Ah! Do we not understand the consequences of monopoly? While discouraging those it excludes, does it not destroy the skill of those it favors? Are we unaware that any work from which free competition is excluded will be performed less well and more expensively? . . .

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p2

Who is bold enough to maintain that the Third Estate does not contain within itself everything needful to constitute a complete nation? It is like a strong and robust man with one arm still in chains. If the privileged order were removed, the nation would not be something less but something more. What then is the Third Estate? All; but an “all” that is fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? It would be all; but free and flourishing. Nothing will go well without the Third Estate; everything would go considerably better without the two others.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p7

With respect to population, everybody knows that the third orderenjoys a vast numerical superiority over the first two. I have no better knowledge than anybody else as to the exact proportion; but, like anybody else, I can estimate .   Therefore, in total, there are less than 200,000 privileged individuals of the first two orders. Compare their number with the 25 or 26 million inhabitants, and draw your own conclusions.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès on the Third Estate, What is the Third Estate? (1789) p17

From the second point of view, the Third Estate is the nation. In this capacity, its representatives constitute the whole National Assembly and are seized of all its powers. As they alone are the trustees of the general will, they do not need to consult those who mandated them about a dispute that does not exist. If they have ask for a constitution, it is with one accord; they are always ready to submit to the laws that the nation may please to give them, but they do not have to appeal to the nation on any problem arising out of the plurality of orders. For them, there is only one order, which is the same as saying that there is none; since for the nation there can be only the nation.