What is the Third Estate? HW #2
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes
Catholic priest who wrote "what is the Third Estate". He vigorously opposed the privilege that lay at the heart of French society. He referred the nobility as a foreign parasite. He argued that the common people of the third estate, who did most of the work and paid most of the taxes, constituted the true nation. His pamphlet brought together public opinion and played an Important role in convincing representatives of the third estate to proclaim themselves a "National Assembly" in June 1789. He later helped bring Napoleon Bonaparte to power, abandoning the radicalism of 1789 for an authoritarian regime.
Why does he believe that nobles are "foreign" to the nation
Nobles has privileges, exemptions and even rights that are distinct from the rights of the great body of citizens. They do not belong to the common order. It is not covered by the law common to the rest. Their civil rights make it a people apart from the inside of the Nation. Politically, nobles have its own representatives who have no mandate from the people. The nobility's representation still remains essentially distinct and separate from the deputies of the ordinary citizens. It is foreign to the nation by tis very principle. Its mission does not come from the people and it consists in defending not the general interest of the people but the private interests of the nobility.
Nation definition according to Sieyes
A body of associates living under a common law and represented by the same legislature.
Old regime France
No one law applied to all people equally. The monarchy had issued a series of particular laws or privileges that provided special rights and entitlements for selected individuals and groups. Noble privileges were among the weightiest.
What limitations on the law dose he propose?
The law does not try to equalize advantages that certain people have. Advantages which differentiate citizens from one another lie outside the purview of citizenship. Inequalities of wealth or ability are like the inequalities of age, sex, size. it does not detract from the equality of citizenship.
The Third Estate constitutes as the Nation
It is a collectivity of citizens who belong to the common order. When a citizen acquires privileges contrary to common law, he no longer belongs to the common order. Today the Third is everything and nobility but a word. Yet under the cover of this word a new and intolerable aristocracy has slipped in and the people has every reason to no longer want aristocrats. What is the will of the Nation? It is the result of individual wills, just as the nation is the aggregate of the individuals who compose it. Its goal the common security, the common liberty and the public good. Each individual also has his own personal aims. "protected by the common security, I will be able to peacefully pursue my own personal projects, I will seek my happiness where I will assured of encountering only those legal obstacles that society will prescribe for the common interest."
what relationship between citizens and the law does Sieyes envision?
The law grants nothing it protects what already exists until such time that what exists begins to harm the common interest. These are the only limits on individual freedom. The law as being at the center of a large globe; we the citizens without exception stand equidistant from it on the surface and occupy equal places. All are equally dependent on the law. All have their liberty and their property to be protected. This is what Sieyes call the common rights of citizens, by which they are all alike. People communicate with each other, enter into contracts, negotiate, always under the common guarantee of the law.
