Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès: What Is the Third Estate?

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

What Is the Third Estate? attacked the nature of privileges as experienced in eighteenth-century France under the ancien régime (the political system of France before the Revolution). Sieyès categorized four key classes of employment: agrarian workers; workers in industry, which succeeded “in perfecting the gifts of nature”; merchants and dealers, who provided the link between production and consumption of goods; and developers, who designed “objects” of use for consumption. Sieyès claimed it was these forms of employment that sustained the nation, and “nineteen-twentieths” of this burden fell to members of the Third Estate. Effectively, the Third Estate supported the state and also bore the “burdens which the privileged classes refuse to carry” by carrying out all of the hard and valued work. This was the source of contention for the Third Estate. Their hard work was not recognized; moreover, the nobility had placed a “prohibition” on the progress and power of the Third Estate to rise regardless of their use or “abilities.”

The nobility had managed to create an embargo in government as it protected its own privileges—an embargo that served only the interests of the privileged and not of the nation or government. The “distended” ruling class was viewed by Sieyès as a “destructive” caste. Many of them did not work or contribute to the nation, yet they prevented the rise of those from the Third Estate who did benefit the nation, by blocking access to power. Their position was protected under the notion of “public service,” but this was “nothing more than a chimera,” as many were a burden to the state and some usurped the “lucrative and honorable posts” that could have been filled by more talented and deserving men. This lack of “free competition” for places within government inhibited the efforts of these workers and demotivated them.

Crucially for Sieyès, if the government and a nation were to flourish, the best and most capable people must reach positions of power regardless of their background. The exclusion of the most talented due to their origins in the Third Estate was not tenable. Any form of restriction on talent suppressed the progress and ability of the nation at large, as people should be rewarded for their endeavours and talents. The privilege of the nobility excluded them from the common order and law of society, since they were “estranged from the generality of [the people] by its civil and political prerogatives.” The nobility had effectively become an “isolated people in the midst of the great nation.” Not only were they set apart in terms of their privilege, but they also symbolically sat apart from the people in the Estates-General, emphasizing how they represented themselves alone (less than 1 percent of the population) and not the majority of the nation.

A new French nation, according to Sieyès, would be a “body of associates, living under a common law, and represented by the same legislature.” In other words, all were to be equal, subjected to the same law, represented equally by government, and afforded the same opportunities. At the present time, Sieyès claimed that while the Third Estate was the “whole,” it was an “everything” that was “shackled and oppressed.” For it to succeed and for France to become “free,” the privileged order had to be removed so that the nation could flourish through reform.