itated to ask for their rights: it is said that the habit of serving
had taken the courage away from those old communes, which in the middle
ages were so bold.

Finally a book appeared, summing up the whole matter in these two
propositions: WHAT IS THE THIRD ESTATE?--NOTHING. WHAT OUGHT IT
TO BE?--EVERY THING. Some one added by way of comment: WHAT IS THE
KING?--THE SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE.

This was a sudden revelation: the veil was torn aside, a thick bandage
fell from all eyes. The people commenced to reason thus:--

If the king is our servant, he ought to report to us;

If he ought to report to us, he is subject to control;

If he can be controlled, he is responsible;

If he is responsible, he is punishable;

If he is punishable, he ought to be punished according to his merits;

If he ought to be punished according to his merits, he can be punished
with death.

Five years after the publication of the brochure of Sieyes, the third
estate was every thing; the king, the nobility, the clergy, were no
more. In 1793, the nation, without stopping at the constitutional
fiction of the inviolability of the sovereign, conducted Louis XVI. to
the scaffold; in 1830, it accompanied Charles X. to Cherbourg. In each
case, it may have erred, in fact, in its judgment of the offence; but,
in right, the logic which led to its action was irreproachable. The
people, in punishing their sovereign, did precisely that which the
government of July was so severely censured for failing to do when it
refused to execute Louis Bonaparte after the affair of Strasburg: they
struck the true culprit. It was an application of the common law, a
solemn decree of justice enforcing the penal laws. [8]

The spirit which gave rise to the movement of '89 was a spirit of
negation; that, of itself, proves that the order of things which was
substituted for the old system was not methodical or well-considered;
that, born of anger and hatred, it could not have the effect of a
science based on observation and study; that its foundations, in a word,
were not derived from a profound knowledge of the laws of Nature and
society. Thus the people found that the republic, among the so-called
new institutions, was acting on the very principles against which they
had fought, and was swayed by all the prejudices which they had intended
to destroy. We congratulate ourselves, with inconsiderate enthusiasm,
on the glorious French Revolution, the regeneration of 1789, t