STATES, or ESTATES, in politics, the name given to the classes of the population who either directly or by their representatives take part in the government of a country. In all European countries where the northern conquerors established themSelves, the rudi ments of representative government appeared in the form of assemblies brought together to deliberate with the sovereign on the common weal. These assemblies at first consisted of the two estates of the clergy and the nobility or baronage, who together constituted the whole free population of the realm; the nobility including not merely the greater barons, but the whole freeholders. As the burgesses gradually emancipated themselves, and rose into importance, they formed a third estate. In France we find the tiers eta, or citizens, recognized in the states-general (q.v.) in 1302. In Scotland the earliest occasion on which the burghs as attending and concurring in a grant of taxation, is in the parliament held at Canibuskenneth in 1326, in which Robert Bruce set forth to the assembled estates the diminished condition of the royal income in conse quence of the protracted struggle through which the country had come. The burgesses represented by the commissioners for the burghs, continued in Scotland to be a separate estate, and were not, as in England, amalgamated with the knights and lesser barons, who, in the Scots parliament, were always classed with the baronage. The lesser barons were, however, first allowed, and latterly enjoined, to appear by representatives; and the three estates of clergy, barons, and burgesses all sat and deliberated in one house. In England, on the other hand, the knights and lesser barons were at an early period separated from the greater barons, and conjoined with the burgesses into the third estate, which occupied a separate chamber from the lords spiritual and temporal. This
peculiarity iu the original constitution of the tiers etat of England necessarily gave it a weight which it did not possess elsewhere, and exercised an important influence on the constitutional history of the country. As the peasants became emancipated, we also find them in some countries taking a share in the legislative power, either as a part of the tiers etat, or, as iu Sweden, forming a fourth estate. The four estates of nobles, clergy, citizens, and peasants were recognized in Sweden till 1866; and in the Swedish legislature, as constituted, each had its separate chamber. Throughout Europe, except in Russia (though in some small German states, such as Mecklenburg, the diet, representing only the lauded gentry and the towns, has very little authority), the co-operation of the estates with the sovereign in the legislative power is more or less recognized. Som© assemblies have but one chamber, but more of them have two. The lower chamber is always wholly, or partly, elective, but sometimes consists of separate delegates from the different orders of the community, and has representatives of landed proprietors, of towns, of peasants, and of traders and manufacturers. The upper house or senate is in some constitutions hereditary; in some, it consists of members named by the sovereign or by the nobility, or some other class of the community, and often it combines these elements. In a few instances, as in Brazil, it is elected by the same constituency as the lower house, and differs only in the higher property qualification required of its mem bers.