"Reflections on the Revolution in France is the application of Burke's principles to a concrete case. The case was a violation of his condition of civilisation. In the slogan of égalité he read not merely the end of privilege at law but chiefly the end of the inequalities in religion and society which he understood to be the bases of improvement. For the National Assembly was unfitted to govern and would do the work of two subversive groups... One was men of commerce, whom the peculiarities of the French polity had prevented from bringing their wealth to rest in land. Since their ambition for a leading role in society could find no place in the existing order, they were open to suggestions for an alternative. The alternative was supplied by the other group, which consisted of men of letters. They were deists and hated God's order. All combined to attack inequality, social and religious, whether the aristocracy and monarchy or the Church. These institutions had been the source of everything in society that Burke upheld. For him the Revolution, in a word, was the destruction of the proper order of things."