lately active on the side of liberal reforms, and it seemed
possible that their reply might relieve him of a dreaded
responsibility and prevent a conflict. The Notables gave
their advice. They resolved that the Commons should
be elected, virtually, by universal suffrage without conditions of eligibility; that the parish priests should be electors and eligible; that the lesser class of nobles should be represented like the greater. They extended the
franchise to the unlettered multitude, because the danger
which they apprehended came from the middle class, not
from the lower. But they voted, by three to one, that
each order should be equal in numbers. The Count of
Provence, the king's next brother, went with the minority, and voted that the deputies of the Commons should be as numerous as those of the two other orders together. This became the burning question. If the Commons did
not predominate, there was no security that the other
orders would give way. On the other hand, by the
important innovation of admitting the parish clergy, and
those whom we should call provincial gentry, a great concession was made to the popular element. The antagonism
between the two branches of the clergy, and between the
two branches of the noblesse^ was greater than that
between the inferior portion of each and the Third Estate,
and promised a contingent to the liberal cause. It turned
out, at the proper time, that the two strongest leaders of
the democracy were, one, an ancient noble; the other, a
canon of the cathedral of Chartres. The Notables concluded their acceptable labours on December 12. On
the 5th the magistrates who formed the parliament of
Paris, after solemnly enumerating the great constitutional
principles, entreated the king to establish them as the
basis of all future legislation. The position of the government was immensely simplified. The walls of the city had
fallen, and it was doubtful where any serious resistance
would come from.
Meantime, the agitation in the provinces, and the explosion of pent-up feeling that followed the unlicensed printing of political tracts, showed that public opinion
