SHOWING HOW MEN THUS SIMILAR WERE MORE DIVIDED THAN EVER INTO SMALL
GROUPS, ESTRANGED FROM AND INDIFFERENT TO EACH OTHER.
Let us now look at the other side of the picture, and we shall see that
these same Frenchmen, who had so many points of resemblance amongst
themselves, were, nevertheless, more completely isolated from each
other than perhaps the inhabitants of any other country, or than had
ever been the case before in France.
It seems extremely probable that, at the time of the first
establishment of the feudal system in Europe, the class which was
subsequently called the nobility did not at once form a _caste_,
but was originally composed of the chief men of the nation, and was
therefore, in the beginning, merely an aristocracy. This, however, is
a question which I have no intention of discussing here; it will be
sufficient to remark that, during the Middle Ages, the nobility had
become a caste, that is to say, that its distinctive mark was birth.
It retained, indeed, one of the proper characteristics of an
aristocracy, that of being a governing body of citizens; but birth
alone decided who should be at the head of this body. Whoever was not
born noble was excluded from this close and particular class, and could
only fill a position more or less exalted but still subordinate in the
State.
Wherever on the continent of Europe the feudal system had been
established it ended in caste; in England alone it returned to
aristocracy.
It has always excited my surprise that a fact which distinguishes
England from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw
light upon the peculiarities of its laws, its spirit, and its
history, has not attracted to a still greater degree the attention of
philosophers and statesmen, and that habit has rendered it, as it were,
imperceptible to the English themselves. It has frequently been seen by
glimpses, and imperfectly described, but no complete and distinct view
has, I believe, ever been taken of it. Montesquieu, it is true, on
visiting Great Britain in 1739, wrote, ‘I am now in a country which has
little resemblance to the rest of Europe:’ but that is all.
It was indeed, not so much its parliament, its liberty, its publicity,
or its jury, which at that time rendered England so unlike the rest
of Europe; it was something far more peculiar and far more powerful.
England was the only country in which the system of caste had been
not only modified, but effectually destroyed. The nobility and the
middle classes in England followed the same business, embraced the same
professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with each
other. The daughter of the greatest nobleman could already without
disgrace marry a man of yesterday.
In order to ascertain whether caste, with the ideas, habits, and
barriers it creates amongst a nation, is definitely destroyed, look
at its marriages. They alone give the decisive feature which we seek.
At this very day, in France, after sixty years of democracy, we shall
generally seek it in vain. The old and the new families, between which
no distinction any longer appears to exist, avoid as much as possible
to intermingle with each other by marriage.
It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more
prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other. It would have
been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long
time past, no nobility, properly so called, has existed, if we take the
word in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained.
This singular revolution is lost in the night of ages, but a living
witness of it yet survives in the idiom of language. For several
centuries the word _gentleman_ has altogether changed its meaning in
England, and the word _roturier_ has ceased to exist. It would have
been impossible to translate literally into English the well-known line
from the ‘Tartuffe,’ even when Molière wrote it in 1664:--
Et tel qu’on le voit, il est bon gentilhomme.
If we make a further application of the science of languages to the
science of history, and pursue the fate of the word _gentleman_
through time and through space,--the offspring of the French word
_gentilhomme_,--we shall find its application extending in England
in the same proportion in which classes draw near one another and
amalgamate. In each succeeding century it is applied to persons placed
somewhat lower in the social scale. At length it travelled with the
English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen
indiscriminately. Its history is that of democracy itself.
In France the word _gentilhomme_ has always been strictly limited to
its original meaning; since the Revolution it has been almost disused,
but its application has never changed. The word which was used to
designate the members of the caste was kept intact, because the caste
itself was maintained as separate from all the rest as it had ever been.
I go even further, and assert that this caste had become far more
exclusive than it was when the word was first invented, and that in
France a change had taken place in the direction opposed to that which
had occurred in England.
Though the nobility and the middle class in France had become far more
alike, they were at the same time more isolated from each other--two
things which are so essentially distinct that the former, instead of
extenuating the latter, may frequently aggravate it.
During the Middle Ages, and whilst the feudal system was still in
force, all those who held land under a lord (and who were properly
called vassals, in feudal law) were constantly associated with the
lord, though many of them were not noble, in the government of the
Seignory; indeed this was the principal condition of their tenures. Not
only were they bound to follow the lord to war, but they were bound, in
virtue of their holdings, to spend a certain part of the year at his
court, that is in helping him to administer justice, and to govern the
inhabitants. The lord’s court was the mainspring of the feudal system
of government; it played a part in all the ancient laws of Europe,
and very distinct vestiges of it may still be found in many parts of
Germany. The learned feudalist, Edmé de Fréminville, who, thirty years
before the French Revolution, thought fit to write a thick volume on
feudal rights and on the renovation of manor rolls, informs us that
he had seen in ‘the titles of a number of manors, that the vassals
were obliged to appear every fortnight at the lord’s court, and that
being there assembled they judged conjointly with the lord and his
ordinary judge, the assizes and differences which had arisen between
the inhabitants.’ He adds, that he had found ‘there were sometimes
eighty, one hundred and fifty, and even as many as two hundred vassals
in one lordship, a great number of whom were _roturiers_.’ I have
quoted this, not as a proof, for a thousand others might be adduced,
but as an example of the manner in which at the beginning, and for
long afterwards, the rural classes were united with the nobility, and
mingled with them daily in the conduct of affairs. That which the
lord’s court did for the small rural proprietors, the Provincial
Estates, and subsequently the States-General, effected for the citizens
of the towns.
It is impossible to study the records of the States-General of the
fourteenth century, and above all of the Provincial Estates of the
same period, without being astonished at the importance of the place
which the _Tiers-Etat_ filled in those assemblies, and at the power it
wielded in them.
As a man the burgess of the fourteenth century was, doubtless, very
inferior to the burgess of the eighteenth; but the middle class, as a
body, filled a far higher and more secure place in political society.
Its right to a share in the government was uncontested; the part which
it played in political assemblies was always considerable and often
preponderating. The other classes of the community were forced to a
constant reckoning with the people.
But what strikes us most is, that the nobility and the _Tiers-Etat_
found it at that time so much easier to transact business together, or
to offer a common resistance, than they have ever found it since. This
is observable not only in the States-General of the fourteenth century,
many of which had an irregular and revolutionary character impressed
upon them by the disasters of the time, but in the Provincial Estates
of the same period, where nothing seems to have interrupted the regular
and habitual course of affairs. Thus, in Auvergne, we find that the
three Orders took the most important measures in common, and that the
execution of them was superintended by commissioners chosen equally
from all three. The same thing occurred at the same time in Champagne.
Every one knows the famous act by which, at the beginning of the same
century, the nobles and burgesses of a large number of towns combined
together to defend the franchises of the nation and the privileges of
their provinces against the encroachments of the Crown. During that
period of French history we find many such episodes, which appear as if
borrowed from the history of England. In the following centuries events
of this character altogether disappeared.[36]
The fact is, that as by degrees the government of the lordships
became disorganised, and the States-General grew rarer or ceased
altogether--that as the general liberties of the country were finally
destroyed, involving the local liberties in their ruin--the burgess and
the noble ceased to come into contact in public life. They no longer
felt the necessity of standing by one another, or of a mutual compact;
every day rendered them more independent of each other, but at the same
time estranged them more and more. In the eighteenth century this
revolution was fully accomplished; the two conditions of men never met
but by accident in private life. Thenceforth the two classes were not
merely rivals but enemies.[37]
One circumstance which seems very peculiar to France, was that at the
very time when the order of nobility was thus losing its political
powers, the nobles individually acquired several privileges which they
had never possessed before, or increased those which they already
enjoyed. It was as if the members enriched themselves with the spoil
of the body. The nobility had less and less right to command, but
the nobles had more and more the exclusive prerogative of being the
first servants of the master. It was more easy for a man of low birth
to become an officer under Louis XIV. than under Louis XVI.; this
frequently happened in Prussia at a time when there was no example of
such a thing in France. Every one of these privileges once obtained
adhered to the blood and was inseparable from it. The more the French
nobility ceased to be an aristocracy, the more did it become a caste.
Let us take the most invidious of all these privileges, that of
exemption from taxation.[38] It is easy to perceive that from the
fifteenth century until the French Revolution, this privilege was
continually increasing, and that it increased with the rapid progress
of the public burdens. When, as under Charles VII., only 1,200,000
livres were raised by the _taille_, the privilege of being exempted
from it was but small; but when, under Louis XVI., eighty millions
were raised by the same tax, the privilege of exemption became very
great. When the _taille_ was the only tax levied on the non-noble
classes, the exemption of the nobility was little felt; but when taxes
of this description were multiplied a thousandfold under various
names and shapes--when four other taxes had been assimilated with
the _taille_--when burdens unknown in the Middle Ages, such as the
application of forced labour by the Crown to all public works or
services, the militia, &c.--had been added to the _taille_ with its
accessories, and were distributed with the same inequality, then indeed
the exemption of birth appeared immense. The inequality, though great,
was indeed still more apparent than real, for the noble was often
reached through his farmer by the tax which he escaped in his own
person; but in such matters as this the inequality which is seen does
more harm than that which is felt.
Louis XIV., pressed by the financial difficulties which overwhelmed him
towards the end of his reign, had established two common taxes--the
capitation tax and the twentieths; but, as if the exemption from
taxation had been in itself a privilege so venerable that it was
necessary to respect it in the very act by which it was infringed, care
was taken to render the mode of collection different even when the tax
was common. For one class it remained harsh and degrading, for the
other indulgent and honourable.[39]
Although inequality under taxation prevailed throughout the whole
continent of Europe, there were very few countries in which it had
become so palpable or was so constantly felt as in France. Throughout
a great part of Germany most of the taxes were indirect; and even with
respect to the direct taxes, the privilege of the nobility frequently
consisted only in bearing a smaller share of the common burden.[40]
There were, moreover, certain taxes which fell only upon the nobles,
and which were intended to replace the gratuitous military service
which was no longer exacted.
Now of all means of distinguishing one man from another and of
marking the difference of classes, inequality of taxation is the most
pernicious and the most calculated to add isolation to inequality, and
in some sort to render both irremediable. Let us look at its effects.
When the noble and the middle classes are not liable to the same tax,
the assessment and collection of each year’s revenue draws afresh
with sharpness and precision the line of demarcation between them.
Every year each member of the privileged order feels an immediate and
pressing interest in not suffering himself to be confounded with the
mass, and makes a fresh effort to place himself apart from it.[41]
As there is scarcely any matter of public business that does not
either arise out of or result in a tax, it follows that as soon as
the two classes are not equally liable to it, they can no longer have
any reason for common deliberation, or any cause of common wants and
desires; no effort is needed to keep them asunder; the occasion and the
desire for common action have been removed.
In the highly-coloured description which Mr. Burke gave of the ancient
constitution of France, he urged in favour of the constitution of
the French nobility, the ease with which the middle classes could
be ennobled by acquiring an office: he fancied that this bore some
analogy to the open aristocracy of England. Louis XI. had, it is true,
multiplied the grants of nobility; with him it was a means of lowering
the aristocracy: his successors lavished them in order to obtain
money. Necker informs us, that in his time the number of offices which
conferred nobility amounted to four thousand. Nothing like this existed
in any other part of Europe, but the analogy which Burke sought to
establish between France and England on this score was all the more
false.
If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon the
aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is not
specially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, as has
been said, because its outline is indistinct and its limit unknown--not
so much because any man could be admitted into it as because it was
impossible to say with certainty when he took rank there--so that all
who approached it might look upon themselves as belonging to it, might
take part in its rule, and derive either lustre or profit from its
influence.
Whereas the barrier which divided the nobility of France from the other
classes, though easily enough passed, was always fixed and visible,
and manifested itself to those who remained without, by striking and
odious tokens. He who had once crossed it was separated from all those
whose ranks he had just quitted by privileges which were burdensome and
humiliating to them.
The system of creating new nobles, far from lessening the hatred of
the _roturier_ to the nobleman, increased it beyond measure; it was
envenomed by all the envy with which the new noble was looked upon
by his former equals. For this reason the _Tiers-Etat_, in all their
complaints, always displayed more irritation against the newly-ennobled
than against the old nobility; and far from demanding that the gate
which led out of their own condition should be made wider, they
continually required that it should be narrowed.
At no period of French history had it been so easy to acquire nobility
as in 1789, and never were the middle classes and the nobility so
completely separated. Not only did the nobles refuse to endure, in
their electoral colleges, any one who had the slightest taint of
middle-class blood, but the middle classes also as carefully excluded
all those who might in any degree be looked upon as noble. In some
provinces the newly-ennobled were rejected by one class because they
were not noble enough, and by the other because they were too much so.
This, it is said, was the case with the celebrated Lavoisier.
If, leaving the nobility out of the question, we turn our attention to
the middle classes, we shall find the same state of things: the man of
the middle classes living almost as far apart from the common people as
the noble was from the middle class.
Almost the whole of the middle class before the Revolution dwelt in the
towns. Two causes had principally led to this result--the privileges
of the nobles and the _taille_. The Seigneur who lived on his estates
usually treated his peasants with a certain good-natured familiarity,
but his arrogance towards his neighbours of the middle class was
unbounded. It had never ceased to augment as his political power had
diminished, and for that very reason; for on the one hand, as he
had ceased to govern, he no longer had any interest in conciliating
those who could assist him in that task; whilst, on the other, as has
frequently been observed, he tried to console himself for the loss
of real power by an immoderate display of his apparent rights. Even
his absence from his estates, instead of relieving his neighbours,
only served to increase their annoyance. Absenteeism had not even
that good effect, for privileges enforced by proxy were all the more
insupportable.
I am not sure, however, that the _taille_, and all the taxes which had
been assimilated to it, were not still more powerful causes.
I could show, I think, in very few words, why the _taille_ and its
accessories pressed much more heavily on the country than on the
towns; but the reader would probably think it superfluous. It will be
sufficient to point out that the middle classes, gathered together in
the towns, could find a thousand means of alleviating the weight of
the _taille_, and often indeed of avoiding it altogether, which not
one of them could have employed singly had he remained on the estate
to which he belonged. Above all, he thereby escaped the obligation of
collecting the _taille_, which he dreaded far more than that of paying
it, and not without reason; for there never was under the old French
Government, or, I believe, under any Government, a worse condition than
that of the parochial collector of the _taille_. I shall have occasion
to show this hereafter. Yet no one in a village except the nobles could
escape this office; and rather than subject himself to it, the rich man
of the middle class let his estates and withdrew to the neighbouring
town. Turgot coincides with all the secret documents which I have had
an opportunity of consulting, when he says, that ‘the collecting of
the _taille_ converts all the non-noble landowners of the country into
burgesses of the towns.’ Indeed this, to make a passing remark, was one
of the chief causes why France was fuller of towns, and especially of
small towns, than almost any other country in Europe.
Once ensconced within the walls of a town, a wealthy though low-born
member of the middle class soon lost the tastes and ideas of rural
life; he became totally estranged from the labours and the affairs of
those of his own class whom he had left behind. His whole life was now
devoted to one single object: he aspired to become a public officer in
his adopted town.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the passion for place, which
fills almost all Frenchmen of our time, more especially those belonging
to the middle ranks, has arisen since the Revolution; its birth dates
from several centuries back, and it has constantly increased in
strength, thanks to the variety of fresh food with which it has been
continually supplied.
Places under the old Government did not always resemble those of our
day, but I believe they were even more numerous; the number of petty
places was almost infinite. It has been reckoned that between the years
1693 and 1790 alone, forty thousand such places were created, almost
all within the reach of the lower middle class. I have counted that, in
1750, in a provincial town of moderate size, no less than one hundred
and nine persons were engaged in the administration of justice, and
one hundred and twenty-six in the execution of the judgments delivered
by them--all inhabitants of the town. The eagerness with which the
townspeople of the middle class sought to obtain these places was
really unparalleled. No sooner had one of them become possessed of a
small capital than, instead of investing it in business, he immediately
laid it out in the purchase of a place. This wretched ambition has done
more harm to the agriculture and the trade of France than the guilds or
even the _taille_. When the supply of places failed, the imagination
of place-hunters instantly fell to work to invent new ones. A certain
Sieur Lemberville published a memorial to prove that it was quite in
accordance with the interest of the public to create inspectors for a
particular branch of manufactures, and he concluded by offering himself
for the employment. Which of us has not known a Lemberville? A man
endowed with some education and small means, thought it not decorous to
die without having been a government officer. ‘Every man according to
his condition,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘wants to be something by
command of the King.’
The principal difference in this respect between the time of which I
have been speaking and the present is, that formerly the Government
sold the places; whereas now it gives them away. A man no longer pays
his money in order to purchase a place: he does more, he sells himself.
Separated from the peasantry by the difference of residence, and still
more by the manner of life, the middle classes were also for the most
part divided from them by interest. The privileges of the nobles with
respect to taxation were justly complained of, but what then can be
said of those enjoyed by the middle class? The offices which exempted
them wholly or in part from public burdens were counted by thousands:
one exempted them from the militia, another from the _corvée_, a third
from the _taille_. ‘Is there a parish,’ says a writer of the time,
‘that does not contain, independently of the nobles and ecclesiastics,
a number of inhabitants who have purchased for themselves, by dint of
places or commissions, some sort of exemption from taxation?’ One of
the reasons why a certain number of offices destined for the middle
classes were, from time to time, abolished is the diminution of the
receipts caused by the exemption of so large a number of persons from
the _taille_. I have no doubt that the number of those exempted among
the middle class was as great as, and often greater than, among the
nobility.
These miserable privileges filled those who were deprived of them with
envy, and those who enjoyed them with the most selfish pride. Nothing
is more striking throughout the eighteenth century than the hostility
of the citizen of the towns towards the surrounding peasantry, and
the jealousy felt by the peasants of the townspeople. ‘Every single
town,’ says Turgot, ‘absorbed by its own separate interests, is ready
to sacrifice to them the country and the villages of its district.’
‘You have often been obliged,’ said he, elsewhere, in addressing his
Sub-delegates, ‘to repress the constant tendency to usurpation and
encroachment which characterises the conduct of the towns towards the
country people and the villages of their district.’
Even the common people who dwelt within the walls of the towns with the
middle classes became estranged from and almost hostile to them. Most
of the local burdens which they imposed were so contrived as to press
most heavily on the lower classes. More than once I have had occasion
to ascertain the truth of what Turgot also says in another part of his
works, namely, that the middle classes of the towns had found means to
regulate the _octrois_ in such a manner that the burden did not fall on
themselves.
What is most obvious in every act of the French middle classes, was
their dread of being confounded with the common people, and their
passionate desire to escape by every means in their power from popular
control. ‘If it were his Majesty’s pleasure,’ said the burgesses of a
town, in a memorial addressed to the Comptroller-General, ‘that the
office of mayor should become elective, it would be proper to oblige
the electors to choose him only from the chief notables, and even from
the corporation.’
We have seen that it was a part of the policy of the Kings of France
successively to withdraw from the population of the towns the exercise
of their political rights. From Louis XI. to Louis XV. their whole
legislation betrays this intention; frequently the burgesses themselves
seconded that intention, sometimes they suggested it.
At the time of the municipal reform of 1764, an Intendant consulted
the municipal officers of a small town on the point of preserving
to the artisans and working-classes--_autre menu peuple_--the right
of electing their magistrates. These officers replied that it was
true that ‘the people had never abused this right, and that it would
doubtless be agreeable to preserve to them the consolation of choosing
their own masters; but that it would be still better, in the interest
of good order and the public tranquillity, to make over this duty
altogether to the Assembly of Notables.’ The Sub-delegate reported,
on his side, that he had held a secret meeting, at his own house, of
the ‘six best citizens of the town.’ These six best citizens were
unanimously of opinion that the wisest course would be to entrust
the election, not even to the Assembly of Notables, as the municipal
officers had proposed, but to a certain number of deputies chosen
from the different bodies of which that Assembly was composed. The
Sub-delegate, more favourable to the liberties of the people than these
burgesses themselves, reported their opinion, but added, as his own,
that ‘it was nevertheless very hard upon the working-classes to pay,
without any means of controlling the expenditure of the money, sums
imposed on them by such of their fellow-citizens who were probably, by
reason of the privileged exemptions from taxation, the least interested
in the question.’
Let us complete this survey. Let us now consider the middle classes as
distinguished from the people, just as we have previously considered
the nobility as distinguished from the middle classes.[42] We shall
discover in this small portion of the French nation, thus set apart
from the rest, infinite subdivisions. It seems as if the people of
France was like those pretended simple substances in which modern
chemistry perpetually detects new elements by the force of its
analysis. I have discovered not less than thirty-six distinct bodies
among the notables of one small town. These distinct bodies, though
already very diminutive, were constantly employed in reducing each
other to still narrower dimensions. They were perpetually throwing off
the heterogeneous particles they might still contain, so as to reduce
themselves to the most simple elements. Some of them were reduced
by this elaborate process to no more than three or four members,
but their personality only became more intense and their tempers
more contentious. All of them were separated from each other by some
diminutive privileges, the least honourable of which was still a mark
of honour. Between them raged incessant disputes for precedency.
The Intendant, and even the Courts of Justice, were distracted by
their quarrels. ‘It has just been decided that holy-water is to be
offered to the magistrates (_le présidial_) before it is offered to
the corporation. The Parliament hesitated, but the King has called
up the affair to his Council, and decided it himself. It was high
time; this question had thrown the whole town into a ferment.’ If
one of these bodies obtained precedency over another in the general
Assembly of Notables, the latter instantly withdrew, and preferred
abandoning altogether the public business of the community rather than
submit to an outrage on his dignity.--The body of periwig-makers of
the town of La Flèche decided ‘that it would express in this manner
its well-founded grief occasioned by the precedency which had been
granted to the bakers.’ A portion of the notables of another town
obstinately refused to perform their office, because, as the Intendant
reported, ‘some artisans have been introduced into the Assembly, with
whom the principal burgesses cannot bear to associate.’ ‘If the place
of sheriff,’ said the Intendant of another province, ‘be given to a
notary, the other notables will be disgusted, as the notaries are
here men of no birth, not being of the families of the notables, and
all of them having been clerks.’ The ‘six best citizens,’ whom I have
already mentioned, and who so readily decided that the people ought to
be deprived of their political rights, were singularly perplexed when
they had to determine who the notables were to be, and what order of
precedency was to be established amongst them. In such a strait they
presume only to express their doubts, fearing, as they said, ‘to cause
to some of their fellow-citizens too sensible a mortification.’
The natural vanity of the French was strengthened and stimulated by the
incessant collision of their pretensions in these small bodies, and the
legitimate pride of the citizens was forgotten. Most of these small
corporations, of which I have been speaking, already existed in the
sixteenth century; but at that time their members, after having settled
among themselves the business of their own fraternity, joined all the
other citizens to transact in common the public business of the city.
In the eighteenth century these bodies were almost entirely wrapped
up in themselves, for the concerns of their municipal life had become
scarce, and they were all managed by delegates. Each of these small
communities, therefore, lived only for itself, was occupied only with
itself, and had no affairs but its own interests.
Our forefathers had not yet acquired the term of _individuality_, which
we have coined for our own use, because in their times there was no
such thing as an individual not belonging to some group of persons,
and who could consider himself as absolutely alone; but each of the
thousand little groups, of which French society was then composed,
thought only of itself. It was, if I may so express myself, a state of
collective individuality, which prepared the French mind for that state
of positive individuality which is the characteristic of our own time.
But what is most strange is that all these men, who stood so much
aloof from one another, had become so extremely similar amongst
themselves that if their positions had been changed no distinction
could have been traced among them. Nay more, if any one could have
sounded their innermost convictions, he would have found that the
slight barriers which still divided persons in all other respects so
similar, appeared to themselves alike contrary to the public interest
and to common sense, and that in theory they already worshipped the
uniformity of society and the unity of power. Each of them clung to his
own particular condition, only because a particular condition was the
distinguishing mark of others; but all were ready to confound their own
condition in the same mass, provided no one retained any separate lot
or rose above the common level.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See Note XXX., Self-Government adverse to Spirit of Caste.
[37] See Note XXXI.
[38] See Note XXXII., Extent of Exemptions from Taxation.
[39] See Note XXXIII., Indirect Privileges under Taxation.
[40] See Notes XXXIV. and XXXV.
[41] See Note XXXVI., Nobles favoured in Collection of Taxes.
[42] [The use of the French term _bourgeois_, here and in some other
passages translated ‘middle classes,’ is a further proof of the
estimation of the power once exercised by that class in the community.
In English the corresponding term _burgess_ has remained inseparable
from the exercise of municipal rights; and we have no distinctive
appellation, irrespective of political rights, for the large class
which separates the nobility from the populace. That class is, in fact,
in this country, both socially and politically, _the people_.]