It suffices to have made the point that the so called usefulness of a privileged order to the public service is a fallacy-, that, without help from this order, all the arduous tasks in the service are performed by the Third Estate; that without this order the higher posts could be infinitely better filled; that they ought to be the natural prize and reward of recognized ability and service; and that if the privileged have succeeded in usurping all well-paid and honorific posts, this is both hateful iniquity towards the generality of citizens and an act of treason to the commonwealth. Who is bold enough to maintain that the Third Estate does not contain within itself everything needful to constitute a complete nation?57
The problem with excluding the First and Second Estates was that they held a majority of the wealth. Regardless of how hard the Third Estate worked, the wealth was needed to run the country. However, as the Third Estate made up a majority of the population of the nation, it did, in a sense, make up the nation itself. The Third Estate, especially in the areas surrounding Paris, made up some of the loudest proponents of nationalism. They made the strongest call for change within the state, and put the nation before all else.
Along with the cahiers, these revolutionary pamphlets constitute the best sources of information on the thinking of literate Frenchmen at the beginning of the Revolution. They reflected the nationalist ideology that would become important during the Revolution. “Written, for the most part, by the men who were to dominate in France during the revolutionary years to come, they at once simplified and popularized the philosophical ideas current in the eighteenth century and laid the ideological and practical basis for many of the debates and laws of the Constituent and, to a lesser extent, the later assemblies”58 By examining publications dating from the Eve of the French Revolution, historians can compare the nationalist sentiment that was expressed there with the opinions that were expressed previously under the Ancien Régime…
When they defined the word ‘patriotism,’ the pamphleteers said they meant love of country and of fellow-citizens, and the desire that both they and France be prosperous and happy. Specifically, however, to them a patriot was a citizen who, loving his country and countrymen, wished to make his country great and his countrymen happy through the well-known reforms. Patriotism, in fact, had become synonymous with reform, and to be called ‘patriotic’ was becoming the greatest honor to which men might aspire.63
A French patriote was a full-blown nationalist, setting his own nation above all other nations, and contemplating it with feelings bordering on adoration.64 Patriotism was something to which all good citizensp aspired. To be considered a patriot in the French Revolution was to be respected. Patriots were often the leading figures of the Revolution. They showed great love for and devotion to their country. Nationalist sentiment can be seen in the efforts to plan a government that would make the nation great. In France, the nationalism expressed through patriotism was aimed at uniting a nation with a government that was in the interests of the people, and not for the personal gains of a monarch.
In August of 1789, the National Assembly declared the abolition of feudalism and decreed the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.” This document asserted that men are born and remain free and equal in rights.65 It also showed the strong nationalist leanings of the National Assembly: “The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially in the nation. No body and no individual may exercise authority which does not emanate expressly from the nation.”66 It hailed the nation as the all-powerful entity from which authority and privilege extended. The Declaration also echoed Rousseau’s ideas about the general will.
