Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a statement of fundamental rights adopted by the French National Constituent Assembly on 26 August 1789. In 17 short articles it proclaimed that men are born free and equal in rights, that sovereignty belongs to the nation and that law must express the general will. Written in the first summer of the French Revolution, it became one of the founding texts of modern human rights and remains part of French constitutional law today.

Background

By the summer of 1789 France was in political upheaval. The Estates-General, summoned to resolve a financial crisis, had turned into a National Assembly that claimed to represent the whole nation. After the storming of the Bastille on 14 July and a wave of rural unrest, the Assembly abolished feudal privileges in the famous night session of 4 August.

Many deputies believed that a new constitution should begin with a statement of the principles on which it rested. They wanted to set out, once and for all, the rights that government existed to protect, so that citizens could judge every law and every official against them. Others feared that an abstract declaration might encourage disorder and argued that duties should be listed too, or that the declaration should wait until the constitution was finished.

Sources and influences

The Declaration drew on the ideas of the Enlightenment. John Locke had argued that people possess natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that government rests on consent. Montesquieu had stressed the separation of powers as a guard against tyranny. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the general will, the collective will of a sovereign people, shaped the articles on law and sovereignty.

American examples were also important. The Virginia Declaration of Rights of June 1776, drafted mainly by George Mason, and the American Declaration of Independence of July 1776 had shown that rights could be written down as the basis of a new political order. Several state constitutions included bills of rights, and these were translated and widely read in France.

The Marquis de Lafayette, a veteran of the American war, presented a draft declaration to the Assembly on 11 July 1789. He had discussed it with Thomas Jefferson, then the American minister in Paris. Jefferson commented on the text but was not its author.

Drafting and adoption

During July and August the Assembly received many drafts, from Lafayette, the Abbé Sieyès, Jean-Joseph Mounier and others. A committee of five deputies, including the Comte de Mirabeau, produced a compromise text that failed to satisfy the Assembly.

On 19 August the deputies chose as the basis for discussion a draft prepared by one of the Assembly’s working groups, the Sixth Bureau. They then debated it article by article from 20 to 26 August, rewriting much of it. The final text consisted of a preamble and 17 articles, adopted on 26 August. The Assembly regarded it as provisional and intended to add further articles once the constitution was complete, but this never happened.

Louis XVI hesitated to give his assent. He accepted the Declaration only on 5 October 1789, when thousands of Parisians, many of them women, had marched to Versailles demanding bread and royal approval of the Assembly’s decrees.

What the Declaration says

The preamble states that ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights are the sole causes of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments. The Assembly therefore sets out the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man, “in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being”.

The main principles can be grouped as follows:

• Equality and natural rights (Articles 1 and 2): Men are born and remain free and equal in rights, and social distinctions may be founded only on the common good. The aim of every political association is to preserve the natural rights of liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.
• Sovereignty and law (Articles 3 to 6): Sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others, and its limits can be fixed only by law. Law is the expression of the general will, and all citizens are equally eligible for public offices according to their abilities.
• Justice (Articles 7 to 9): No one may be accused, arrested or detained except in cases set by law. Punishments must be strictly necessary and laws may not be applied retroactively. Everyone is presumed innocent until declared guilty.
• Belief and expression (Articles 10 and 11): No one may be troubled for their opinions, even religious ones, so long as they do not disturb public order. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is described as one of the most precious rights of man.
• Government and taxation (Articles 12 to 16): A public force is needed to guarantee rights. Taxes must be shared among citizens according to their means and approved by them or their representatives. Officials are accountable, and a society without guaranteed rights and separation of powers has no constitution.
• Property (Article 17): Property is an inviolable and sacred right, which may be taken only for public necessity and with fair compensation in advance.

Limits and contradictions

The Declaration spoke in universal terms, but its authors did not apply it equally to everyone. Within months the Assembly divided citizens into “active” citizens, who paid enough tax to vote, and “passive” citizens, who did not. Women were excluded from political rights. In 1791 the writer Olympe de Gouges answered with her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, which mirrored the original article by article.

Religious minorities gained rights gradually. Protestants were admitted to civil and political rights in December 1789, and Jews in stages, with full emancipation voted in September 1791.

The greatest contradiction concerned slavery. France’s Caribbean colonies, above all Saint-Domingue, relied on the labour of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans. The Declaration did not mention slavery, and colonial interests resisted applying it overseas. After the slave uprising in Saint-Domingue that began in 1791, the National Convention abolished slavery in February 1794. Napoleon restored it in 1802, and France abolished it definitively only in 1848.

Debate and criticism

The Declaration provoked an international argument. In Britain, Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) attacked abstract rights as dangerous and praised inherited traditions. Thomas Paine replied with Rights of Man (1791), defending the Declaration and printing a translation of it. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham dismissed natural and imprescriptible rights as “nonsense upon stilts”.

In France itself, later revolutionary governments issued new declarations. The Declaration of 1793 added rights to public assistance and education and even a duty of insurrection, while that of 1795 paired rights with duties. Neither achieved the lasting status of the 1789 text.

Legacy

The Declaration of 1789 has outlived every French regime that followed it. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic, adopted in 1958, refers to it in its preamble. In a landmark decision of 16 July 1971 on freedom of association, the Constitutional Council ruled that the preamble, and therefore the Declaration, has full constitutional force. French courts can now strike down laws that breach its articles.

Its influence spread far beyond France. Liberal and democratic movements across Europe and Latin America in the 19th century drew on its language. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 echoes its first article, and the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 protects many of the same freedoms, such as fair trial, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. In 2003 the original Declaration was inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration. Fact: Jefferson advised Lafayette on an early draft, but the final text was written and amended by the French Assembly.
• Myth: The Declaration gave equal rights to all people in France immediately. Fact: Political rights were limited by property and sex, and slavery continued in the colonies until 1794.
• Myth: It was the first written declaration of rights. Fact: It followed earlier texts such as the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, though its universal language was new in scope.

Timeline

• 1789, 11 July: Lafayette presents a draft declaration to the Assembly.
• 1789, 14 July: The storming of the Bastille.
• 1789, 4 August: The Assembly abolishes feudal privileges and agrees to draw up a declaration.
• 1789, 19 August: The Sixth Bureau’s draft is chosen as the basis for debate.
• 1789, 20 to 26 August: Article-by-article debate; the Declaration is adopted on 26 August.
• 1789, 5 October: Louis XVI accepts the Declaration during the march on Versailles.
• 1791, 3 September: The Declaration becomes the preamble to France’s first written constitution.
• 1971, 16 July: The Constitutional Council confirms its constitutional force.

Why it matters

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen turned Enlightenment ideas into a public charter of rights that a nation claimed for itself. Its promises of equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, and government by consent were not fully kept in 1789, but they became standards by which later generations judged governments, in France and around the world.