The Fourth Estate

Author’s Note

In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the ‘Estates General.’

The First Estate consisted of three hundred nobles.

The Second Estate, three hundred clergy.

The Third Estate, six hundred commoners.

Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons said, ‘Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.’