- For,
personal services counted, even among the upper nobility; and all the
more among the lower class, in the Third-Estate, and among the people.
Among the notables of every degree just described, most of them, in
1789, were fully grown men, many of them mature, a goodly number
advanced in years, and some quite aged; consequently, in justification
of his rank and emoluments, or of his gains and his fortune, each
could allege fifteen, twenty, thirty and forty years of labor and
honorability in private or public situations, the grand-vicar of the
diocese as well as the chief-clerk of the ministry, the intendant of
the g?n?ralit? as well as the president of the royal tribunal, the
village cur?, the noble officer, the office-holder, the lawyer, the
procureur, the large manufacturer, the wholesale dealer, as well as
the well-to-do farmer, and the well-known handicraftsman. - Thus, not
only were they an ?lite corps, the most valuable portion of the
nation, the best timber of the forest, but again, the wood of each
branch belonged to that trunk; it grew there, and was the product of
its own vegetation; it sprung out of the trunk wholly through the
unceasing and spontaneous effort of the native sap, through time-
honored and recent labor, and, on this account, it merited respect.
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