the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the state.

The value attached to the privileges of birth, decreased in the exact
proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the
eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it
might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and
equality was thus introduced into the government by the aristocracy
itself.

In the course of these seven hundred years, it sometimes happened that,
in order to resist the authority of the crown, or to diminish the power
of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights
to the people. Or, more frequently the king permitted the lower orders
to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the
aristocracy.

In France the kings have always been the most active and the most
constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious, they spared
no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were
temperate or weak, they allowed the people to rise above themselves.
Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices.
Louis XI. and Louis XIV. reduced every rank beneath the throne to the
same subjection; Louis XV. descended, himself and all his court, into
the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal
property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every
improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture, was a fresh
element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery,
every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved