The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, the rights of Man are universal: valid at all times and in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. Although it establishes fundamental rights for French citizens and all men without exception, it addresses neither the status of women nor slavery; despite that, it is a precursor document to international human rights instruments.
The 1789 Declaration defines a single set of individual and collective rights for all men. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, these rights are held to be universal and valid in all times and places. For example, "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good."[3] The Declaration also asserted the principles of popular sovereignty, in contrast to the divine right of kings that characterized the French monarchy, and social equality among citizens, "All the citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents," eliminating the special rights of the nobility and clergy.
While it set forth fundamental rights, not only for French citizens but for "all men without exception," it did not make any statement about the status of women, nor did it explicitly address slavery.[4] The Declaration is considered to be a precursor to modern international human rights instruments.[citation needed]
Historical context
The Declaration was a step in the transition of France from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Many of the principles in the declaration directly oppose the institutions and usages of the ancien régime of pre-revolutionary France. France soon became a republic, and this document remains fundamental: the principles set forth in the declaration are of constitutional value in present-day French law and may be invoked in opposing legislation or other government activities.
The concepts in the declaration come from the philosophical and political principles of the Age of Enlightenment, such as individualism, the social contract as theorized by the English philosopher John Locke and developed by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the separation of powers espoused by the Baron de Montesquieu. As can be seen in the texts, the French declaration is heavily influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, and by Enlightenment principles of human rights contained in the U.S. Declaration of Independence (4 July1776), of which the delegates were fully aware.[5]Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, was at the time in France as a U.S. diplomat[6], and was in correspondence with members of the French National Constituent Assembly.
"(From Article III) – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it."
This contrasts with the pre-revolutionary situation in France, where the political doctrine of the monarchy found the source of law in the divine right of kings.
(From Article VI) – "All the citizens, being equal in [the eyes of the law], are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents."
Again, this strikingly contrasts with the pre-revolutionary division of French society in three estates (the clergy, the aristocracy, and the rest of the populace, known as the Third Estate), where the first two estates had special rights. Specifically, it contradicts the idea of people being born into a nobility or other special class of the population, and enjoying (or being deprived of) special rights for this reason.
All citizens are to be guaranteed the rights of "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression". The Declaration argues that the need for law derives from the fact that "...the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights". Thus, the declaration sees law as an "expression of the general will", intended to promote this equality of rights and to forbid "only actions harmful to the society".
Before the adoption of the declaration those of the laboring class which had made up the Third Estate during the Old Regime had few rights, if any. Only the First and Second Estates enjoyed the luxuries of a just society. The adoption of The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen gave the lower class a new identity. They were no longer a group that could be trampled on by the upper classes; they had their individual rights and the ability to be active French citizens. Now the former Third Estate was welcome to fair judicial hearings and appropriate due process.
During the Old Regime the laboring class was unfairly represented because their representatives were concerned only with personal agendas and not the desires of those they were meant to represent. Article XII of The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen states “The guarantee of the rights of man and citizen requires a public force; this force then is instituted for the advantage of all and not for the personal benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.” This article guarantees the protection of the people’s rights and also guarantees that, unlike in the Old Regime, people in positions of power will not abuse their positions for personal gains. Such a promise shows notable improvement in the conditions for French citizens since the fall of the Old Regime.
The declaration then goes on to address another primary concern of the working class citizens, taxes. The Old Regime tax policy made it so that the Church and the nobility were excused from taxation. Only the Third Estate was required to pay a tax to the government. Often this tax was so steep that those who were forced to pay it could not even afford it. Article XIII of the declaration abolishes the idea of Old Regime taxation and introduces a new, more equal approach to taxes: “A general tax is indispensable for the maintenance of the public force and for the expenses of administration; it ought to be equally apportioned among all citizens according to their means.” This new tax policy greatly benefited the working class because not only did it split up taxation among all French citizens, it also assured the less fortunate that their taxes would not be too high. Instead they would be taxed according to their financial situation.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen offered working men basic liberties that they were previously denied, eliminated the threat of corrupt and self-serving positions of power at any level, and gave them their individual rights and no longer treated the lower class workers as a mob that could be oppressed and controlled.
The Declaration puts forward several provisions similar to those in the United States Constitution (1787) and the United States Bill of Rights (1789, and adopted after the Declaration). Like the U.S. Constitution, it discusses the need to provide for the common defense and states some broad principles of taxation, especially equality before taxation (a striking difference from the pre-revolutionary era, when the Church and the nobility were exempted from most taxes). It also specifies a public right to an accounting from public agents as to how they have discharged the public trust.
The declaration prohibits ex post facto application of criminal law and proclaims the presumption of innocence, prohibiting undue duress to the suspect. In pre-revolutionary France, while technically one was considered guilty only after having been sentenced by the appropriate authorities, the royal courts, known as parlements, made ample use of torture to extract confessions, and gave few rights to the defense — therefore, it would have been very likely that one would have been convicted and sentenced, if one had been suspected.
It provides for freedom of speech and of the press, and a slightly weaker guarantee of freedom of religion — "provided that [...the] manifestation [...of their religious opinions] does not trouble the public order established by the law". It asserts the rights of property, while reserving a public right of eminent domain:
"(From Article XVII) - Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity [that is, compensation]."
The Declaration recognized most rights as belonging only to men. This was despite the fact that after The March on Versailles on 5 October1789, women presented the Women's Petition to the National Assembly in which they proposed a decree giving women equality.[citation needed] In 1790 Nicolas de Condorcet and Etta Palm d’Aelders unsuccessfully called on the National Assembly to extend civil and political rights to women.[7] Condorcet declared that “and he who votes against the right of another, whatever the religion, color, or sex of that other, has henceforth adjured his own”.[8] The French Revolution did not lead to a recognition of women’s rights and this prompted de Gouges to publish the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in September 1791.[9]
The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen is modelled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and is ironic in formulation, seeking to expose the failure of the French Revolution, which had been devoted to equality. The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen follows the seventeen articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen point for point and has been described by Camille Naish as “almost a parody... of the original document”. The first article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaims that:
“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.”
The first article of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen replied:
“Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may only be based on common utility”.
Women were eventually given these rights with the adoption of the 1946 Constitution of the French Fourth Republic.
Slavery
The declaration did not revoke the institution of slavery, as lobbied for by Les Amis des Noirs and defended by the group of colonial planters meeting at the Hôtel Massiac.[10] Despite the lack of explicit mention of slavery in the Declaration, the slave revolt on Saint-Domingue that became the Haitian Revolution took inspiration from its words, as discussed in C.L.R. James' history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.[citation needed]
Effect today
According to the preamble of the Constitution of the French Fifth Republic (adopted on 4 October1958, and the current constitution), the principles set forth in the Declaration have constitutional value. Many laws and regulations have been canceled because they did not comply with those principles as interpreted by the Conseil Constitutionnel ("Constitutional Council of France") or the Conseil d'État ("Council of State").
Many of the principles in the 1789 declaration have far-reaching implications nowadays:
Taxation legislation or practices that seem to make some unwarranted difference between citizens are struck down as anticonstitutional.
Suggestions of positive discrimination on ethnic grounds are rejected because they infringe on the principle of equality, since they would establish categories of people that would, by birth, enjoy greater rights.
The declaration has also influenced and inspired rights-based liberal democracy throughout the world. It was translated as soon as 1793-94 by Colombian Antonio Nariño, who published it despite the Inquisition and was imprisoned ten years for it. In 2003, the document was listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
^The American Declaration was in part based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights developed by George Mason in June 1776, themselves based on the 1689 English Bill of Rights, published a full century before the French version. By comparison, few French in 1789 were vividly aware of these precedents of the American declaration.
^The club of reactionary colonial proprietors meeting since July 1789 at the Hôtel Massiac were opposed to representation in the Assemblée of France's overseas dominions, for fear "that this would expose delicate colonial issues to the hazards of debate in the Assembly," as Robin Blackburn expressed it (Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 [1988:174f]); see also the speech of Jean-Baptiste Belley
