Having leisure, they were given to reading; as they
were not overwhelmed with newspapers they read books worth reading; I
have found in old libraries in the provinces, in the houses of the
descendants of a manufacturer or lawyer in a small town, complete
editions of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon and Condillac,
with marks in each volume showing that the volume had been read by
someone in the house before the close of the eighteenth century.
Nowhere else, likewise, had all that was sound and liberal in the
philosophy of the eighteenth century found such a welcome; it is from
this class that the patriots of 1789 were recruited; it had furnished
not only the majority of the Constituent Assembly, but again all the
honest men who, from July, 1789 to the end of 1791 performed their
administrative duties so disinterestedly, and with such devotion and
zeal, amidst so many difficulties, dangers and disappointments.
Composed of Feuillants or Monarchists, possessing such types of men as
Huez of Troyes or Dietrich of Strasbourg, and for representatives such
leaders as Lafayette and Bailly, it comprised the superior
intelligence and most substantial integrity of the Third-Estate.
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