All that experience and human intelligence had thought up, discovered and elaborated over three centuries may be found in the cahiers. The various abuses of the old monarchy are there set out, and remedies proposed; all forms of freedom are called for, even press freedom; improvements of all sorts requested for industry, manufactures, trade, roads, the army, taxation, state finances, schools, physical education, etc.

Even today we cannot fail to get this impression that the cahiers at one and the same time pushed back and fixed the limits of political liberation, when the most tolerant regimes are still far from bringing about all the aspirations that 1789 let loose. Complete freedom of the press and habeas corpus are still, two centuries after the meeting of the Estates-General, unmet demands. It is, then, well worthwhile to dwell for a moment on these cahiers which set out, for France and further afield, until now and perhaps still for tomorrow, a social ideal based on the dignity of mankind and respect for the individual, a society in which the state would not be some monstrous and intolerant Leviathan grinding down the citizen the better to enslave him in the name of a dubious efficiency, but a harmonious compromise between necessary authority and reasonable freedoms. How could we not reflect a moment on this plan for society which met some resistance almost everywhere even before its promise came to fulfilment?