ity in strength, wealth, and credit, little
by little extended itself and raised itself, and ended by engaging in a
real contest with the superior class. It is now acknowledged that the
struggle at Rome between the plebeians and patricians was a sequel and a
prolongation of the war of conquest, was an effort on the part of the
aristocracy of the cities conquered by Rome to share the rights of the
conquering aristocracy. The families of plebeians were the chief
families of the vanquished peoples; and though placed by defeat in a
position of inferiority, they were not any the less aristocratic
families, powerful but lately in their own cities, encompassed by
clients, and calculated from the very first to dispute with their
conquerors the possession of power. There is nothing in all this like
that slow, obscure, heart-breaking travail of modern burgherdom escaping,
full hardly, from the midst of slavery or a condition approximating to
slavery, and spending centuries, not in disputing political power, but in
winning its own civil existence. The more closely the French third
estate is examined, the more it is recognized as a new fact in the
world's history, appertaining exclusively to the civilization of modern,
Christian Europe.

Not only is the fact new, but it has for France an entirely special
interest, since--to employ an expression much abused in the present day--
it is a fact eminently French, essentially national. Nowhere has
burgherdom had so wide and so productive a career as that which fell to
its lot in France. There have been communes in the whole of Europe, in
Italy, Spain, Germany, and England, as well as in France. Not only have
there been communes everywhere, but the communes of France are not those
which, as communes, under that name and in the middle ages, have played
the chiefest part and taken the highest place in history. The Italian
communes were the parents of glorious republics. The German communes
became free and sovereign towns, which had their own special history, and
exercised a great deal of influence upon the general history of Germany.
The communes of England made alliance with a portion of the English
feudal aristocracy, formed with it the preponderating house in the
British government, and thus played, full early, a mighty part in the
history of their country. Far were the French communes, under that name
and in their day of special activity, from rising to such political
importanc