who received the commission to speak in the name of all.  They all had at heart one and the same idea; they desired to turn the old and undisputed monarchy into a legalized and free government.  Clergy, nobles, and third estate, there was not in any of their minds any revolutionary yearning or any thought of social war.  It is the peculiar and the beautiful characteristic of the states-general of 1484 that they had an eye to nothing but a great political reform, a regimen of legality and freedom.

Two men, one a Norman and the other a Burgundian, the canon John Masselin and Philip Pot, lord of la Roche, a former counsellor of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, were the exponents of this political spirit, at once bold and prudent, conservative and reformative.  The nation’s sovereignty and the right of the estates not only to vote imposts but to exercise a real influence over the choice and conduct of the officers of the crown, this was what they affirmed in principle, and what, in fact, they labored to get established.  “I should like,” said Philip de la Roche, “to see you quite convinced that the government of the state is the people’s affair; and by the people I mean not only the multitude of those who are simply subjects of this crown, but indeed all persons of each estate, including the princes also.  Since you consider yourselves deputies from all the estates of the kingdom, why are you afraid to conclude that you have been especially summoned to direct by your counsels the commonwealth during its quasi-interregnum caused by the king’s minority?  Far be it from me to say that the reigning, properly so called, the dominion, in fact, passes into any hands but those of the king; it is only the administration, the guardianship of the kingdom, which is conferred for a time upon the people or their elect.  Why tremble at the idea of taking in hand the regulation, arrangement, and nomination of the council of the crown?  You are here to say and to advise freely that which, by inspiration of God and your conscience, you believe to be useful for the realm.  What is the obstacle that prevents you from accomplishing so excellent and meritorious a work?  I can find none, unless it be your own weakness and the pusillanimity which causes fear in your minds.  Come, then, most illustrious lords, have great confidence in yourselves, have great hopes, have great manly virtue, and let not this liberty of the estates, that your ancestors were so zealous in defending, be imperilled by reason of your soft-heartedness.”  “This speech,” says Masselin, “was listened to by the whole assembly very attentively and very favorably.”  Masselin, being called upon to give the king “in his privy chamber, before the Dukes of Orleans and Lorraine and a numerous company of nobles,” an exact account of the estates’ first deliberations, held in his turn language more reserved than, but similar to, that of Lord Philip de la Roche, whose views he shared and whose proud