understood politics as the science of the State as it ought to be, and
he repudiated the product of history, which is things as they are. No
American ever grasped more firmly the principle that experience is an
incompetent teacher of the governing art. He turned resolutely from
the Past, and refused to be bound by the precepts of men who believed
in slavery and sorcery, in torture and persecution. He deemed history
a misleading and useless study, and knew little of its examples and
its warnings. But he was sure that the Future must be different, and
might be better. In the same disdainful spirit he rejected Religion as
the accumulated legacy of childhood, and believed that it arrested
progress by depreciating terrestrial objects. Nevertheless he had the
confidence of Lubersac, Bishop of Treguier, and afterwards of
Chartres, who recommended him to the clergy of Montfort as their
deputy.

Sieyes preferred to stand for the Third Estate at Paris, where he was
elected last of all the candidates. One of his preliminary tracts
circulated in 30,000 copies, and had promptly made him famous, for it
was as rich in consequences as the ninety-five theses of Wittenberg.
His philosophy of history consisted in one idea. Barbarians had come
down from Germany on the people of civilised and imperial Gaul, and
had subjugated and robbed them, and the descendants of the invading
race were now the feudal nobles, who still held power and profit, and
continued to oppress the natives. This identification of privileged
noble with conquering Frank was of older date; and in this century it
has been made the master-key to modern history. When Thierry
discovered the secret of our national development in the remarks of
Wamba the Witless to Gurth, under the Sherwood oaks, he applied to us
a formula familiar to his countrymen; and Guizot always defined French
history as a perpetual struggle between hostile nations until the
eighteenth century made good the wrong that was done in the fifth.

Right or wrong, the theory of Sieyes was adopted by his most learned
successors, and must not be imputed to ignorance. His argument is that
the real nation consisted of the mass of men enjoying no privilege,
and that they had a claim for compensation and reprisal against those
who had been privileged to oppress and to despoil them. The Third
Estate was equal to the three Estates together, for the others had no
right to be represented. As power exercised otherwise th