Excerpt from The History of France, Vol. 2 of 5 It is the mutual tendency of the several classes in a progressive society to consolidate their respective rights, and thus found institutions. Political rights are but the consequence and the guarantee of civil ones, and the mere struggle to obtain the latter leads to the creation of the former. The annals of the reign just narrated, and of the one now entered upon, mark the efforts of the F rencb, and especially of the Parisian citizens, to guard their property and to acquire power or rights for the purpose of doing so. Unfortunately all such attempts in F rance were made by each class separately, and even in antagonism with the others; king, nobles, and commons, always at strife and never in unison, carrying on a civil war of class, which in the end proved fatal alike to all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.