It is beyond a doubt that this doctrine served to keep the majority from oppressing the minority whatever may have been its name.

Only, in point of fact, it was most frequently the third estate that must have profited by the regulation.
"In brief, we may, before the fifteenth century, make suppositions, but they are no more than mere conjectures.

It was at the great States of Tours, in 1468, that, for the first time, the third order bore the name which has been given to it by history." The fact was far before its name.

Had the third estate been centred entirely in the communes at strife with their lords, had the fate of burgherdom in France depended on the communal liberties won in that strife, we should see, at the end of the thirteenth century, that element of French society in a state of feebleness and decay.

But it was far otherwise.