Having considered the composition of the third estate, as it stood in its original frame, I took a view of the representatives of the clergy.  There, too, it appeared that full as little regard was had to the general security of property, or to the aptitude of the deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of their election.  That election was so contrived as to send a very large proportion of mere country curates to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state:  men who never had seen the state so much as in a picture; men who knew nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy; among whom must be many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a body of wealth in which they could hardly look to have any share, except in a general scramble.  Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily become the active coadjutors, or at best the passive instruments, of those by whom they had been habitually guided in their petty village concerns.  They, too, could hardly be the most conscientious of their kind, who, presuming upon their incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a trust which led them from their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to undertake the regeneration of kingdoms.  This preponderating weight, being added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers Etat, completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.

To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, that the majority of the third estate, in conjunction with such a deputation from the clergy as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction of the nobility, would inevitably become subservient to the worst designs of individuals in that class.  In the spoil and humiliation of their own order these individuals would possess a sure fund for the pay of their new followers.  To squander away the objects which made the happiness of their fellows would be to them no sacrifice at all.  Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.  One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others.  To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections.  It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.  The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.