It cannot be denied that in the forthcoming Estates-General the chamber
of the Third Estate has full competence to convoke the kingdom by
What is the Third Estate? 151
way of an extraordinary representation. It is its responsibility above all else,
therefore, to expose the falsity of the existing French constitution to the
generality of citizens. It is its responsibility to complain as loudly as possible
that an Estates-General made up of several orders cannot be anything
but a badly organized body, unable to perform its national functions. It is
its responsibility at the same time to demonstrate the need to give special
powers to an extraordinary deputation so that, through clearly defined
laws, it can then draft the constitutional forms of its legislature.