There once was a time (and, unhappily,
it was a long time) when the impotence of the Third Estate
would quite rightly have led patriots to shed a tear or heave a sigh. But if
it were to seal its own misfortune now; if, at the very moment when it
can do something, it were to subject itself voluntarily to abjection and
opprobrium, with what sort of names and feelings would it not deserve
to be castigated? If it is right to commiserate with the weak, it is also right
to despise the coward. Better still to dismiss this image of a final misfortune
that cannot now be conceived, presupposing as it does the most vile
baseness among twenty-five million men.