text:  How would such insults to the common origin of man to the common powers of the human mind to the common desires of distinction born with every man be endured in this country? Is it to be wondered at that France should have abolished them by acclamation? I contend that this was a victory gained not for a populace but for a people for all France for twenty-eight millions of men--over a portion of society who had lost their rank a body already sentenced by their personal inefficiency--a caste who like a famished garrison had been starved by the sterility of the spot in which they had inclosed themselves; or like the Indian devotees had turned themselves into cripples by their pretence of a sacred superiority to the habits of the rest of mankind