In pre-Revolutionary France, the central government of the King assumed all power. This left the religious and secular nobility (the 1st and 2nd Estates), with prerogative and privilege, without the concomitant duty to serve. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted of L’Ancien Régime:
“It had different prerogatives, was animated by a different spirit, played a different part, and inspired sentiments of quite another order. It must be remembered, too, that local governments had broken down and made way for a central administration staffed by a bureaucracy that was steadily undermining the power of the nobility.”
The reaction back then bears a stark resemblance to the House and the Senate today:
“And with the rising tide of popular feeling, the parliaments tended more and more to a take a hand in politics while, as a result of the increasing efficiency (due to long, cumulative experience) of the central power and its officers, the parliaments concerned themselves less and less with matters of an administrative order in the strict sense. Thus the French parliament became less and less an administrative and more and more a demagogic body.”
