Estates and Privilege versus Colonial Society

French society before 1789 was legally divided into three estates: the clergy, the nobility and everyone else, the Third Estate, which made up roughly 97 percent of a population of about 28 million. Privilege was written into law: nobles held exclusive rights to certain offices, received seigneurial dues from peasants and enjoyed tax exemptions. American colonial society was unequal too, especially because of slavery, but among free white men it had no legal nobility, no tithes owed to a national church in most colonies, and widespread landownership.

This difference matters for comparison. The French Revolution had a legally defined privileged order to abolish, which gave it a social dimension America lacked. Abbé Sieyès captured the mood in January 1789 with his pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? , answering that it was 'everything' but had been 'nothing'.