On the Proposal to Imitate the English Constitution
Different interests have had time to develop within the noble order. It is not far from dividing into two parties. All those connected to the three or four hundred most distinguished families aspire towards the establishment of an upper chamber, similar to the one in England. Their pride has been fed on the hope that they will no longer be confused with the mass of ordinary gentlemen. Thus the high nobility would be quite happy to see the rest of the nobility relegated to the House of Commons along with the generality of citizens. The Third Estate will take care to preserve itself from a system that aims at nothing less than filling its own house with people with an interest that is so contrary to the common interest, a system that would soon
push it back towards nullity and oppression. In this respect, there is a real difference between England and France. In England the only nobles with privileges are those granted a share in the legislative power by the constitution.25 Every other citizen is subsumed under the same interest; there are no privileges that give rise to distinct orders. If, in France, there were
a desire to join the three orders together to form one, then every kind of privilege would have to be abolished first. The noble and the priest would have to have no other interest than the common interest and, under the protection of the law, would have to enjoy no more than the rights of ordinary citizens. Without this, it would be pointless to join the three orders together under the same denomination. They would still remain three types of heterogeneous matter that it would be impossible to amalgamate. Here, I have no wish to be accused of supporting any distinction of orders, something that I hold to be an invention that is the most harmful to any social good. The only misfortune greater than this would be the even more extreme misfortune of nominally combining the orders while still leaving them really separate by maintaining their privileges. This would set the seal on their victory over the Nation forever.
Public safety calls for the common interest of society to be preserved somewhere in a pure and unmixed form. On the basis of this point of view—the only good, truly national, point of view—the Third Estate will never lend its authority to admitting several different orders into a
so-called House of Commons, because the very idea of a House of Commons made up of different orders is a monstrosity. It amounts to a contradiction in terms.