This means that it is the Third Estate
that will have to make the greatest effort and almost all the initial outlay
needed for the work of national restoration. Due warning must be given,
moreover, that if things cannot be made better, there can be no question
of simply leaving them as they are. Circumstances do not allow for that
kind of cowardly calculation. The choice is either to advance or retreat. If
you are not prepared to proscribe the mass of iniquitous and antisocial
privileges, then you will have to choose to accept them and make them
legal. But the blood boils at the mere thought that at the end of the
eighteenth century it could be possible to give a legal sanction to the
abominable fruit of feudal abomination.