The plan of this book is fairly simple. We must ask ourselves three questions.

What is the Third Estate? Everything.
What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing.
What does it want to be? Something.

We are going to see whether the answers are correct...We shall next examine the measures that have been tried and those that must still be taken for the Third Estate really to become something.

Chapter 1. The Third Estate Is a Complete Nation

The Third Estate then contains everything that pertains to the nation while nobody outside the Third Estate can be considered as part of the nation. What is the Third Estate? Everything.

Chapter 2. What Has the Third Estate Been Until Now? Nothing

Chapter 3. What Does the Third Estate Want to Be? Something

Third and Last Claim of the Third Estate: That the States-General Vote, Not by Orders, but by Heads

Nobody can deny that in the coming States-General the Chamber of the Third Estate will be fully competent to convoke the kingdom in extraordinary representation. Therefore, it is preeminently the duty of the Third Estate to explain the falsity of France’s constitution to the citizenry. It is its duty to expostulate that since the States-General is composed of several orders, it must necessarily be ill-organized and incapable of fulfilling its national tasks; at the same time it is its duty to demonstrate the need to provide an extraordinary deputation with special powers to determine, by clearly defined laws, the constitutional forms of the legislature.
Until then, the order of the Third Estate will suspend, not of course its preparatory proceedings, but the exercise of its actual power; it will take no definitive decisions; it will wait for the nation to pass judgment in the great contention between the three orders. Such a course, I admit, is the most straightforward, the most magnanimous, and, therefore, the best suited to the dignity of the Third Estate.
The Third Estate can therefore view itself in either of two ways. The first is to regard itself simply as an order; in that case, it agrees not to shake off completely the prejudices of archaic barbarism; it recognizes two other orders in the state, without however attributing to them more influence than is compatible with the nature of things; and it shows all possible regard for them by consenting to doubt its own rights until the supreme arbiter has made its decision.
From the second point of view, the Third Estate is the nation. In this capacity, its representatives constitute the whole National Assembly and are seized of all its powers. As they alone are the trustees of the general will, they do not need to consult those who mandated them about a dispute that does not exist. If they have to ask for a constitution, it is with one accord; they are always ready to submit to the laws that the nation may please to give them, but they do not have to appeal to the nation on any problem arising out of the plurality of orders. For them, there is only one order, which is the same as saying that there is none; since for the nation there can be only the nation.

It is very hard to explain the spirit of the student movement, but I will try even though I can really only describe a few characteristics. ... It speaks to the better sort among the young, the men of heart and spirit who love all that is good, and it gives them nourishment and purpose. For the average student in the past, the university years were a time to enjoy life... Their pleasures, their organizations, and their conversation were all shaped by their being students, and their only obligation to the university was to scrape by and avoid failing the examination—it was only bread-and-butter learning.

There are still many like this. Indeed, they remain the majority overall. But at several universities, another group—in my eyes, a better one—has gained the upper hand and sets the mood. Indeed, I prefer really not to call it a "mood," for it is something really much stronger than that.... Those who share in this spirit have Love of the Fatherland as their guiding principle. Their purpose is to make a better future for the Fatherland, each as best he can; to spread national consciousness (or, to use a much ridiculed and maligned Germanic expression, more "folkish-ness"); and to work for better constitutions.

We want more sense of community among the several states of Germany, greater unity in their policies and in their principles, no separate policies for each state but the closest possible relations with each other; above all, we want Germany to be considered one land and the German people, one people. In the forms of our student life, we show as near as possible how we want to approach this in the real world. We forbid all regional fraternities and live in a German comradeship, one people in spirit... We give ourselves the most free of constitutions, just as we would like Germany to have the freest one possible, insofar as it is suitable for the German people. We want a constitution for the people that fits with the spirit of the times and with the people's own level of enlightenment, rather than with what each prince chooses to give based on his own preferences and private interests. Above all, we want the princes to understand and follow the principle that they exist for the country, and not the country for them.

… "Taking our stand on the conviction that the mighty current of thought of today demands new political formations and that the state must be reconstructed, if not within new bounds, at least upon new foundations, we have proposed to the Austrian Emperor, under whose constitutional rule the majority of us live, that the imperial State be converted into a federation of nations all enjoying equal rights, whereby regard would be paid not less to the different needs of these nations than to those of the united Monarchy. We see in such a federal union not only our own salvation but also liberty, enlightenment and humanity generally, and we are confident that civilised Europe would readily contribute to the realisation of that union. In any case we are determined to ensure for our nationality in Austria , by all the means available to us, a full recognition of the same rights in the State as the German and Magyar nations already enjoy and in this we rely upon the powerful demand for all genuine rights which wells up warmly in every truly free breast." …
Slavonic and East European Review 26 (1947/1948), p. 309 ff

… A hundred years ago a man's political likes and dislikes seldom went beyond the range which was suggested by the place of his birth or immediate descent. Such birth or descent made him a member of this or that political community, a subject of this or that prince, a citizen - perhaps a subject - of this or that commonwealth. The political community of which he was a member had its traditional alliances and traditional enmities, and by those alliances and enmities the likes and dislikes of the members of that community were guided. But those traditional alliances and enmities were seldom determined by theories about language or race. The people of this or that place might be discontented under a foreign government; but, as a rule, they were discontented only if subjection to that foreign government brought with it personal oppression or at least political degradation. Regard or disregard of some purely local privilege or local feeling went for more than the fact of a government being native or foreign. What we now call the sentiment of nationality did not go for much; what we call the sentiment of race went for nothing at all. Only a few men here and there would have understood the feelings which have led to those two great events of our own time, the political reunion of the German and Italian nations after their long political dissolution. …
From: Edward Augustus Freeman, Essay - Race and Language (1879)
Edward Augustus Freeman was appointed regius professor of modern history at Oxford (1884)