Their increased wealth enabled them to buy up the estates of the
outlawed emigres and the confiscated lands of the Church. They secured
an effective control of all branches of government, local and central.
Of course, the peasantry also benefited to no slight extent, but their
benefits were certainly less impressive than those of the bourgeoisie.
Of all classes in France, the urban proletariat seemed to have gained
the least: to be sure they were guaranteed by paper documents certain
theoretical "rights and liberties," but what had been done for their
material well-being? They had obtained no property. They had
experienced no greater ease in earning their daily bread. And in 1791
they seemed as far from realizing their hopes of betterment as they had
been in 1789, for the bourgeois constitution-makers had provided that
only taxpayers could vote and only property-owners could hold office.
The proletariat, thereby cut off from all direct share in the conduct
of government, could not fail to be convinced that in the first phase
of the Revolution they had merely exchanged one set of masters for
another, that at the expense of the nobles and clergy they had exalted
the bourgeoisie, and that they themselves were still downtrodden and
oppressed.
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