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Our third estate evolved from another categorical demarcation: slavery, servitude and poverty.

From the beginning, our third estate was not everyone not part of the first two estates, as in France, nor a commons, as in England, but those not of the political or plutocratic classes who nonetheless had suffrage, the franchise, eligibility to vote.

Originally, even as the second estate was defining itself through control of infrastructure and markets, the third estate knew itself as land-holders.