They had allowed themselves to be stripped of everything;
they let themselves be exiled, imprisoned, tortured and made martyrs
of, like the Christians of the primitive church; through their
invincible meekness, they were going, like the primitive Christians,
to exhaust the rage of their executioners, wear out persecutions,
transform opinion and compel the admission, even with those who
survived in the eighteenth century, that they were true, deserving and
courageous men.
V. The Bourgeoisie.
Where recruited. - Difference between the functionary of the ancient
regime and the modern functionary. - Appointments seen as Property.
- Guilds. - Independence and security of office-holders. - Their
ambitions are limited and satisfied. - Fixed habits, seriousness and
integrity. - Ambition to secure esteem. - Intellectual culture. -
Liberal ideas. - Respectability and public zeal. - Conduct of the
bourgeoisie in 1789-1791.
Below the nobles and the clergy, a third class of notables, the
bourgeoisie, almost entirely confined to the towns,[74] verged on the
former classes through its upper circles, while its diverse groups,
ranging from the parliamentarian to the rich merchant or manufacturer,
comprised the remainder of those who were tolerably well educated, say
100 000 families, recruited on the same conditions as the bourgeoisie
of the present day: they were "bourgeois living nobly," meaning by
this, living on their incomes, large manufacturers and traders,
engaged in liberal pursuits-lawyers, notaries, procureurs, physicians,
architects, engineers, artists, professors, and especially the
government officials; the latter, however, very numerous, differed
from ours in two essential points.
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