Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/31

 them as necessary accompaniments of our culture, greets them as the flower and outcome of it, and occasionally makes speeches recognising and approving them.

After all this discussion, gentlemen, you will now clearly comprehend the true significance of the famous pamphlet which was published in 1788 the year before the French Revolution by the Abbe Siéyes, and which is summed up in these words, "What is the third Estate? Nothing! What ought it to be? Everything!"

The Bourgeoisie was called the third Estate in France, because they formed the third class, in contra-distinction to the two privileged classes, the nobility and the clergy, and thus included the whole of the nonprivileged population.

Siéyes then thus formulated these two questions and answers. But their true significance, as follows from what I have already said, might be expressed more strikingly and correctly as follows—

"What is the third Estate actually and in fact? Everything!

But what is it legally or constitutionally? Nothing!"

The point is, therefore, to make the legal position of the third class, identical with its actual position; to obtain legal sanction and recognition for its actual and existing significance,—and this is precisely the work and the significance of the victorious Revolution which broke out in France in 1789, and of the transforming influence which it exercised over the other countries of Europe.

I am not going, gentlemen, to enter upon the history of the French Revolution. We can now only glance, and that in the most brief and cursory manner, which is all