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PARTISAN REVIEW
The pamphlet, "What is the Third Estate?," contained the radical con–
cepts that would mold the Revolution and chart its course. Sieyes was a
forty year-old priest and church administrator, surprisingly indifferent to
religion and spirituality but passionate about philosophy, politics, and his
heroes, Descartes and Voltaire. Reserved, perpetually clothed in sullen
black, his face pale, his health fragile, he seemed to come alive only when
he spoke out about freeing France from her history. Then his weak voice
would gain strength as his abstract ideas gained audacity, his eyes ablaze as
he attacked with trenchant, emotionless words the predatory aristocracy
that he despised. Sieyes was Madison's French counterpart, the artisan of
revol utionary ideology.
That winter, an alarming economic crisis rocked France. Every day
people demonstrated in the streets over taxes and food shortages.
Expectantly, everyone awaited the momentous meeting of the Estates
General, hoping that the Estates could restore financial order as well as
address burning questions of liberty and equality. Following the centuries–
old formula, representatives of the three orders-the nobility, the clergy,
and the Third Estate-would meet, each order deliberating separately.
Spokesmen for the Third Estate were already objecting to this antiquated
structure. Looking for a strategy that would guarantee them a majority,
they were demanding that the three estates meet together rather than sep–
arately and that the Third Estate be accorded representation equal to the
two other orders combined.
But in his pamphlet Sieyes had gone even further, making a far more
radical demand. Bitterly denouncing the entire anachronistic institution of
the Estates General, he declared that there should be a single National
Assembly comprised solely of representatives of the Third Estate. The aris–
tocracy and the clergy together included about two hundred thousand
members; the Third Estate, twenty-five million. The nation and the Third
Estate, he argued, were one and the same.
"What is the Third Estate?" Sieyes demanded in his lapidary style.
"Everything. What has it been in the political order up to now? Nothing.
What is it asking for? To become something." Instantaneously Sieyes
excluded the two privileged orders from membership in the nation. Their
representatives, he claimed, spoke not for different orders but for different
nations. Even the clothes they wore, he added, proved that they were for–
eign. Thomas Jefferson, always buoyed by upheaval and revolution,
commented that Sieyes's words "electrified France."
"How easy it would be to do without the privileged orders!" Sieyes
predicted. "How difficult it will be to turn them into citizens!" The first
two orders detracted from the nation. Wi thout them, France would be
more, not less; without them, the nation would flourish. Though he
