invested with political rights. There appeared the estate of the clergy,
of the barons, of other classes. In the Scandinavian kingdoms to this day,
the estate of the peasants sends its representatives to the Diet. In
England, under the Normans, the Church and the Baronage were convoked,
together with the estate of the Community, a term which then probably
described the inferior holders of land, whose tenure was not immediate of
the Crown. This Third Estate was so numerous, that convenience suggested
its appearance by representation; while the others, more limited,
appeared, and still appear, personally. The Third Estate was reconstructed
as circumstances developed themselves. It was a Reform of Parliament when
the towns were summoned.

In treating the House of the Third Estate as the House of the People, and
not as the House of a privileged class, the Ministry and Parliament of
1831 virtually conceded the principle of Universal Suffrage. In this point
of view the ten-pound franchise was an arbitrary, irrational, and
impolitic qualification. It had, indeed, the merit of simplicity, and so
had the constitutions of Abbe Sieyes. But its immediate and inevitable
result was Chartism.

But if the Ministry and Parliament of 1831 had announced that the time had
arrived when the Third Estate should be enlarged and reconstructed, they
would have occupied an intelligible position; and if, instead of
simplicity of elements in its reconstruction, they had sought, on the
contrary, various and varying materials which would have neutralised the
painful predominance of any particular interest in the new scheme, and
prevented those banded jealousies which have been its consequences, the
nation would have found itself in a secure condition. Another class not
less numerous than the existing one, and invested with privileges not less
important, would have been added to the public estates of the realm; and