he resistance of the privileged and
interested classes which was the source of his necessity, but he was
not apprehensive of a national opposition. He was prepared to rely on
the Third Estate with hopefulness, if not with confidence, and to pay
a very high price for their support. In a certain measure their
interest was the same. The penury of the State came from the fact that
more than half the property of France was not taxed in its proportion,
and it was essential for the government to abolish the exception, and
to bring nobles and clergy to surrender their privilege, and pay like
the rest. To that extent the object of the king was to do away with
privilege and to introduce equality before the law. So far the Commons
went along with him. They would be relieved of a heavy burden if they
ceased to pay the share of those who were exempt, and rejected the
time-honoured custom that the poor should bear taxation for the rich.
An alliance, therefore, was indicated and natural. But the extinction
of privilege, which for monarchy and democracy alike meant fiscal
equality, meant for the democracy a great deal more. Besides the money
which they were required to pay in behalf of the upper class and for
their benefit and solace, money had to be paid to them. Apart from
rent for house or land, there were payments due to them proceeding
from the time, the obscure and distant time, when power went with
land, and the focal landholder was the local government, the ruler and
protector of the people, and was paid accordingly. And there was
another category of claims, proceeding indirectly from the same
historic source, consisting of commutation and compensation for
ancient rights, and having therefore a legal character, founded upon
contract, not upon force.

Every thinking politician knew that the first of these categories, the
beneficial rights that were superfluous and oppressive, could not be
maintained, and that the nobles would be made to give up not only that
form of privilege which consisted in exemption from particular taxes,
but that composed of superannuated demands in return for work no
longer done, or value given. Those, on the other hand, which were not
simply mediaeval, but based upon contract, would be treated as lawful
property, and would have to be redeemed. Privilege, in the eyes of the
state, was the right of evading taxes. To the politician it meant,
furthermore, the right of imposing taxes. For the rural democracy